To create a Fibonacci sequence, each number is formed by adding the two previous numbers. So, if we start with 1 and 1, the sequence goes 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 21 etc. There are interesting and well-known examples of Fibonacci numbers appearing in nature, and a related concept is the golden ratio. […]
Author: Science by degrees
Weekly round-up, part 2
In science news this week… The Guardian newspaper reported on the likely fate of the Sun in a few billion years’ time. Amazing that the Sun is losing mass at the rate of 4 billion kilograms per second (due to its nuclear reactions and the wonder of [latex]E=mc^2[/latex]) and yet it will still last this […]
How does a phone call work? Part 1
You should be much more in awe of your mobile phone (cellphone) than you are. In ‘The World’s War’ by David Olusoga, we learn that the first British action of the First World War was “the severing of five underwater telegraph cables that linked Germany to the United States.” The effect of this was that […]
Weekly round-up, part 1
This is the first of our new (hopefully!) weekly round-ups of interesting science articles, videos, podcasts, etc. We’ll try to give up to 10 decent links each week. On the 14th of September 2015 the twin detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory made the first direct observation of gravitational waves. Since then five other events […]
Analogy in science – this blog post works just like a whistle
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 […]
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 […]
How come stars and planets look so similar to the naked eye?
Probably most people know that stars and planets are very different. Very different. A star is a massive collection of plasma sustaining nuclear reactions, so far away (apart from our own Sun) that its light takes many years to get to us. A planet is much smaller and is a rocky/gaseous ball that orbits our […]
Who first split the atom? And, how to win quizzes…
Growing up I knew that the answer to the quiz question ‘Who first split the atom?’ was ‘Ernest Rutherford’, even if I didn’t necessarily know exactly what the question meant. It still occurs in quiz circles – check out question 20 in the Daily Telegraph’s science and nature quiz from 2010. The answer is Ernest […]
What does 4380 mean? Or, how much coffee is in a half-pound bag of coffee…?
The number 4380 got picked from a random pressing of the numeric keypad. It could be any number. We’re going to discuss the semi-random number, 4380, as a way to get, maybe, a fresh insight into what numbers do. Numbers for counting The first thing to say is that 4380, as written (and we’ll write […]
Science is hard if you anthropomorphize your molecules
The inspiration for this post comes from a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon (if you are from a generation unfamiliar with these Bill Watterson cartoons, then go and discover them after reading this blog). Calvin sees his mum crying in the kitchen, and asks why. She explains that she is cutting up an onion, to which […]
Trying to visualise a nanometre
Working in science, and more recently in science communication, I frequently find myself working in the nano-world – wavelengths measured in nanometres, nanostructures, forces that act over unimaginably short length scales. I never used to question these distances – they were all just numbers followed by ‘nm’. Recently, however, after thinking about various topics to write […]
No Mr Bond, I don’t know anything about radioactivity
Admit it, you didn’t think James Bond could teach you much about physics. But in the film Goldfinger (1964), the eponymous villain hatches a plan to irradiate the US gold reserve at Fort Knox, rendering it worthless, and increasing the value of his own gold hoard, meanwhile providing us with a chance to discuss radioactivity. […]
Why we exist. Or, “not another science blog…”
We are two friends working in the science communication industry in the UK. Two years ago we had cause to look at a series of undergraduate physics and math(s) textbooks, and realised that, although we could (roughly) understand them now, they had seemed almost impossible to follow when we really needed them, that is, when […]