Today was the day our MPhys students give their talks, saying what they did on their Research Years. All our MPhys students spend a year doing research near the end of their 4-year course. I learnt something from all 4 talks I attended, and I was very impressed. They had all done very good work […]
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Many people know that graphite and diamond are both pure carbon – the only difference is that the carbon atoms are arranged differently in the two types of crystals. In graphite the carbon atoms are arranged in sheets, which can slide past each other easily allowing graphite to be used in pencils, while in diamond […]
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The stereotype of the academic scientist is often an Einstein-like figure. A solitary genius with frizzy white hair wrestling with the secrets of the universe. Reality is a bit different. Most of the actual research in universities is done by PhD students and postdocs (people who have just done PhDs), and also by final year […]
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During a meeting with Jim Al-Khalili and our project student, Spencer (Jim mentions our project here) we talked about the appropriate length units with which to discuss different physical objects. When talking about things of human dimensions, metres are sensible units, but when talking about distances between stars, light years are more reasonable, as we […]
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I am reading, and enjoying, “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine“, Michael Lewis’ book on the 2008 financial crash. Judging from the book, the main reasons for the crash were human factors, basically people were placing multi-billion dollar bets they didn’t understand. They assumed the bets were virtually risk free. This was a mistake. […]
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