Random walk

Life, the universe and… more physics

laura1060 — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 14:05:21 +0000

I walked down Brick Lane yesterday at one in the afternoon and a load of the NYE caners were still at it… I was particularly impressed by the woman in the faux fur coat stumbling along clutching a martini. Class.

Anyway seeing the queues outside 93 feet east reminded me that I never posted the video made by John Mikail of RJ media (I want to link but have no more details – soz John) from our (admittedly much tamer) physics event in the same venue. Several Oort Kuiper tracks on there for your listening pleasure

TUNE

laura1060 — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:21:37 +0000

Its Tesla Coils playing the Super Mario theme song. I need say no more.

Courtesy of Gizmodo.

Life, the universe and… physics

laura1060 — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:07:26 +0000

Last night I was a little bit terrified but very excited to host Life, the Universe and… Physics, which took place in 93 feet east, a bar/club on Brick Lane in East London. Widely known as a bit of a trendy hangout, me and the Science London crew were a little surprised that they agreed to host a science cafe, stargazing and science rap performance.

As we were kindly supported by the Institute of Physics for the event, we stuck to the physics theme throughout. During the science cafe at the start of the evening our speakers Colin, Manda, Leah and Lewis told us a bit about their areas of research, which spanned the universe to include the Cassini mission to Saturn, distant galaxies and the possibilities for extraterrestrial life.

The crowd really got into the questions and we had a great discussion about dark energy, the future of the universe, whether we will colonise space, and the definition of a ‘spherical bastard’ (apparently a person that, whatever direction you look at them from, is still a bastard).

After a short break, we were treated to the scientific hip hop delights of Jon Chase, aka MC Oort Kuiper. Here’s his YouTube hit, Astrobiology. People in the club knew the words. Amazing.

But why bother with an event like this in a space where science rarely treads? Science London is about getting science out there alongside art, performance and music as part of what ‘culture’ is. While many of the 100 or so people that came along were probably already interested in science, there were also a load who had no idea what was happening, but stayed and took an interest anyway. That’s why we do it

Friday fact

laura1060 — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:36:48 +0000

An ostrich egg takes over an hour to hard boil. FACT

Friday fact

laura1060 — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 11:36:01 +0000

An average bottle of champagne produces about 100 million bubbles. FACT

Generation Y – again

laura1060 — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:38:17 +0000

I have blogged about generation theory before… I was lucky enough yesterday to hear Paul Redmond (coiner of the term ‘helicopter parents‘) speak about Generation Y, employablility and the credit crunch yesterday at an Aimhigher Greater Merseyside event in Liverpool. Thought I’d share his video crunchonomics:

Makes me glad I made up my own job…

Carpet Continuum

laura1060 — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:30:25 +0000

I volunteer for the Institute of Physics Physics Communicators Group. We had our inaugural meeting this month and I got to facilitate a session called Beyond the lecture: where next for physics communication?

To capture everyone’s ideas, we wrote them on post it notes and because there were way too many to fit on a flipchart we laid them all out on the floor, sorting them from activities where we had loads of experience to those where we had absolutely no clue. The result was this wonderful CARPET CONTINUUM:

Thanks to everyone who contributed!

Page 3 physics

laura1060 — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 16:41:17 +0000

Been alerted to this today

I don’t believe I missed it at the time! I trust Keeley is following the repair of the electromagnets with interest. Courtesy of Alex Connor

Friday fact

laura1060 — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 08:02:26 +0000

In one hour more energy in the form of sunlight falls on the earth than what is used by the entire population in one year. FACT

Air penguins

laura1060 — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:27:40 +0000

I was at the physics department at Imperial College London today, and one of the postgrads there told me about these awesome robot air penguins.

I want one!

Apparently they have been designed to move through air the same way real penguins move through water. The group that created them, Festo, engineer robotic muscles for a range of applications.