A New World
My ramblings about science….

This is just a short semi-rant…

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Well a little while ago when I wrote my other post about what I was thinking of doing with my blog I wrote down a list of topics about which I was going to write….

It seems I’ve lost it!

Just when I expected to have some time (in about a months time) to actually write a couple of them!

So any ideas/comments for misconception blog posts?

There’s been a couple of threads recently (http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?p=453040#post453040 and http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?p=454576#post454576) which got me thinking, about something I’ve thought about before and is on my list of things to write a proper blog about.

When we teach people science from an early age, we lie to them and simplify things, is this really the best way to do it?  The main argument against this is that kids don’t have the mathematical backing to be able to know that

Even if we didn’t teach the people the maths and just taught them that F=ma is a simplification of the rate of change of momentum, I know that 12 year olds can get to grip with that being true.

But my problem is we spent years learning times tables and by the end of high school (16) some of us were just being taught trig (very simple stuff), is this really the best way to teach kids?  I know I found most of my maths learning very very dull indeed, as did many of my contemporaries.

This leads me onto my second point, the use of language in science, this is a far more personal issue (in terms that no overriding strategy can ever deal with this).

There are many many terms whos use is ambiguouse, mass is a good example of this, when most phycists use the term mass, they mean invariant mass (or rest mass but as the post above I don’t like rest mass, I like invariant), but not always, this leads to confusion that I might be able to work threw, but that’s because I’m familiar with relativity, but when teaching people, surely it’s best to be as detailed as possible when teaching these things.  To always use the term invariant mass, when you mean that and relativistic mass when you mean that, I also feel consistency is key to this, say you do two courses on relativity over a couple of years the first course uses just mass (implying invariant mass), the second is a bit off and uses relativistic mass and invariant mass, you’ve never heard this term before and it might take you a while to realise just quite what has happened…

What are they?

What evidence is there that they exist? Read the rest of this entry »

A brief look at quantum entanglement.

What it is.

What it isn’t.

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Well my exams are over (and have been for a week).  If all goes to plan they’ll be my last exams ever.  And they including 3h 45mins in an exam where I could be asked any question on any bit of physics!  That was rather tough!  So what now?

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Well as my exams are soon I’m not getting much done, so thought I’d write a quick todo list somewhere where I know I wont lose it: Read the rest of this entry »

Well I felt that as I wrote a blog on IceCube last week that given this news I should also write a blog on it…

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This is probably the coolest astrophysics experiment I’ve come across, a telescope that has all it’s detectors pointed towards the centre of the earth. Read the rest of this entry »

Well this is about as personal as my blog is likely to get…

If only because I don’t like personal blogs…

A short story about my life…

Or at least the bit of my life between about midnight and 2am…

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