There’s a fantastic story about Isidor Rabi (I think), who won the Nobel Prize for his work on nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). NMR is an indispensable technique in chemical analysis, and also the basis of MRI scanners in hospitals. This story shows that Rabi must have had the admirable trait of being secure enough in […]
Month: April 2018
Big numbers
In a previous post I argued that it is hard to picture a billion, or a billionth. Because a billion is a pretty big number. However, in science we need to deal all the time with numbers much bigger than that, even if they aren’t easy to visualise. The fact that they aren’t easy to […]
Where have all the solids, liquids and gases gone?
We are all taught at school that the three states of matter are solids, liquids and gases. It makes sense, and we don’t tend to question it. After all, we walk on the solid earth, drink liquid water and breathe the gaseous air. Without any one of these three states of matter, our lives would […]