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Public Key

npub18qzypexrj4f0ehhuq7264y3d6q0kqmrvetgtmj9efwdjxw6z2w4q7hn84a

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsrspzqunpe25humm7q09d2jgkaq8mqd3kv459aezu5hxer8dp982sprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmntmqu7ft

Publishing to

relay.momostr.pink

Last Notes

2026-08-25 18:16:06 UTC

RE: https://social.treehouse.systems/@Elizafox/117156048035019806
This goes perfectly too far. I need to memorise a monologue based on this in case 6-7 becomes a retro thing in school.

2026-08-08 16:25:46 UTC

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The council make half-hearted efforts to prevent it, more serious plans have been petitioned against. It's considered a cultural artwork by many, including Banksy, and sometimes gets topically themed cones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equestrian_statue_of_the_Duke_of_Wellington,_Glasgow

2026-08-08 16:12:56 UTC

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Quite the reverse, generally.

2026-07-25 19:18:13 UTC

Nice little memorial to artist/photographer Richard Blosse in Portmahomack.
Camera aperture motif with inset glass, and:
SO LONG
AND THANKS
FOR
ALL THE FISH
IN MEMORY OF
RICHARD BLOSSE
ARTIST & FRIEND
Nice touch is that dolphins can sometimes be spotted in the background.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/982/186/404/977/435/original/09c9fb3fdcfe1b49.jpg

2026-07-22 18:51:43 UTC

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(Alpaca ;)

2026-07-21 21:03:05 UTC

Has anyone told Andy Burnham he can tax incredibly rich people a little bit to pay for almost any reasonable policy?

2026-07-17 22:03:45 UTC

Ann Droid is very, very Diane Morgan. If you like her work you'll find it hilarious (as I do). If you're not sure, imagine Toast Of London does Humans. Mostly very silly gags, but some incredibly touching little moments. Give it the first two episodes.

2026-07-15 23:50:44 UTC

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My astronomy Prof was Alan Heavens.

2026-07-08 14:06:54 UTC

Nice line from Adam Savage on a Mythbusters episode: "Bring in the Immovable Object!"

2026-07-03 23:05:08 UTC

I had a question on Tom Scott's "Lateral" podcast quiz today, yay! Downside, they edited about two words and the team nailed it almost immediately 😂
But here's my original:
The BFI Southbank cinema in London is the only one in the UK allowed to show a particular film. Why?
[BFI = British Film Institute]

2026-06-29 21:13:15 UTC

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This is another favourite paper: all but one of the 30 authors is 9 or 10 years old, the other is their primary school teacher. But it's a legitimate paper, refereed and accepted by a journal, about what bees remember. The crayon diagrams are awesome.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3061190/

2026-06-29 21:09:24 UTC

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Nice opportunity to introduce them to the concept of reading a scientific paper- "you're not expected to understand all of it, just let it wash over you and see what you pick up".
It helps that this is from the physics-communication side of things. (When I've done this before it's been Wigner's "Unreasonable Effectiveness", but hey, if they have an interest...)
https://arxiv.org/pdf/0911.2761

2026-06-29 16:58:23 UTC

Higher Physics students (so ~16yo) arguing over quantum gravity today. That's way, way beyond what we teach. Nice. The main thread was whether theories that we have no idea how to test count as real science. Also nice.
(My take is that it never hurts to have a self-consistent theory with no testable predictions in your back pocket, but you still need to go outside and catapult water balloons at technicians from time to time.)

2026-06-25 21:39:41 UTC

Northern Highland #Scotland folk: if you live near a beach it could be worth looking for fulgerite tomorrow, patches of sand that have been hit by lightning. If you (very gently, they're fragile!) dig down you may find a branch-like structure where the lightning fused the sand into a kind of glass. Rare, special thing to find.

2026-06-22 20:42:15 UTC

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The PM doesn't have to be the leader of a winning party. They don't even have to be the leader of ANY party. They don't need to be a MEMBER of any party. They just need to be an MP and convince the monarch they can do the job, which basically means being able to pass legislation.
It's entirely conceivable that we have a parliament that is ~5% each of 20 different parties (not unrealistic the way UK politics is going) and an independent, hugely popular MP (say, David Attenborough) is made PM.

2026-06-22 20:25:18 UTC

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So yes, a PM can just quit. There doesn't have to be an immediate replacement, cos we don't actually have to have a PM.
Although there will generally be either a leadership contest and/or the PM will announce a departure date to allow the replacement to fill in the paperwork in time to make it seamless.
But it's all still technically down to the monarch, who can appoint, or not, any MP they wish (in theory).

2026-06-22 20:21:23 UTC

Some international confusion on how the position of Prime Minister works in the UK:
It's not a constitutional position, other than by habit*. The Monarch is, technically, the ruler. However, after a certain amount of awkwardness surrounding our first two King Charles's, the monarch has chosen, voluntarily**, to temporarily deputise some powers to an MP who can demonstrate they're really quite popular.
*We don't have a written constitution
**On the basis they keep the thing the crown goes on

2026-06-19 13:53:10 UTC

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(On a wider theme, if you ever want to read a science paper that is behind a silly $200 paywall, the author/s are allowed to send copies to whoever they want. A polite email, even if you're just Joe/Jane Public with an interest in the topic, will usually be met with delight that someone outside academia is interested. I've done it myself quite a few times.)

2026-06-19 13:09:10 UTC

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Sarson ka saag looks really good as a side! We generally treat "saag" as spinach here, guessing it's a broader term for any big green leafy thing you cook?

2026-06-19 13:00:31 UTC

[EDIT: sorted in minutes, thank you hive mind 😎 👍 ]
Before I pester a retired emeritus, does anyone have a legal way to send me a PDF of a 1987 physics paper that's not on arXiv?
Specifically "Can Planck-mass relics of evaporating black holes close the Universe?", J.H. MacGibbon.

2026-06-18 18:25:37 UTC

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No, *YOU'RE* standing over the stove shovelling mutter paneer directly into your mouth from the pan.
Really good...

2026-06-14 22:08:37 UTC

"Deal" (n): an agreement between two parties. For example, if party A launches a military attack on party B, then realises this causes greater harm to A than B, they may cease the attack and claim a "deal".

2026-06-13 19:34:31 UTC

Going through some old seabird photos. (Yeah, humblebrag 😜)
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/744/458/400/515/347/original/b34b09dc1c21c6a9.jpg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/744/458/463/180/086/original/4aa6b255ff0ea449.jpg

2026-06-13 09:33:50 UTC

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You can, in principle, buy your own TLD, then you own everything under it. But you're looking at a couple of hundred thousand dollars, plus other ongoing costs like DNS hosting etc.

2026-06-08 21:09:18 UTC

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Machine Learning, on the other hand, very useful and fills in stuff we can't do for minimal cost. The protein folding Nobel was spectacular and well deserved, it solved a problem that we'd been working on in "human ways" (see a mate of mine in the 90s) at a stroke.
But all LLMs do is fail to solve the problem of sounding human. They get close, but they fail.

2026-06-08 21:03:46 UTC

I have a proposition for an AI that will reach adult human ability in around 18 years, for very minimal costs, maybe $100,000 tops. From there the abilities accelerate, it may take several thousand instances, but that is likely to produce new science, maths, art etc that will more than repay the investment. One in a million will change the world. A few billion? Just guess.
So fund education. It's the most efficient "AI" we have.

2026-06-07 21:42:33 UTC

Anybody do trading as a hobby level thing? Is there any point shorting AI related companies, or will there just be no organisation left to pay out / value in the money when it collapses?

2026-06-03 18:02:07 UTC

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(From the guy who also flagged up a colleague to the boss for being fricking awesome an hour ago. Yeah, Nobel Prizes mean something career-wise, but not as much as a bunch of colleagues singing your praises. Sing those praises.)

2026-06-03 17:57:53 UTC

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From around 4m30s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1_NXWjmwhc

2026-06-03 17:56:22 UTC

Gerd Faltings on winning the Abel Prize for mathematics:
"I've decided there's a mechanism going on: the prize giver gains in prestige if the winner has prestige, and the prize winner has prestige if the prize giver has prestige, and so the prize giver looks for people who have prestige, and how does he find them? They have to have gotten other prizes. And so it comes that prizes go to few people and there are many people who deserve recognition that don't get it. So it's not a fair system."

2026-06-02 17:49:03 UTC

Had a dream last night that the new school building had converted all of the toilet cubicles to "contemplations booths" or similar, and simply installed an open-plan toilet, no walls, in the centre of each classroom because that was more efficient. I have no further comment on the dream/reality ratio.

2026-05-26 18:31:20 UTC

Great cross-franchise SF actors: René Auberjonois, Sigourney Weaver, Dean Stockwell...others?
I do like it when an actor isn't afraid to do SF "cos it's not real literature" and then deliver some of the great performances.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPnx3zO3SDc

2026-05-22 20:21:08 UTC

Had a skim through the Nat5, Higher, and Advanced Higher physics exam papers today (roughly age 15, 16, 17 respectively). Each had at least one "being a dick" question where needless distractions were introduced. No marks available for spotting the irrelevant stuff, purely there to trip students up. Not sure that's fair. It's not a pub quiz.

2026-05-22 19:55:58 UTC

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I'm sure that there's a hidden multinational corporation, probably with robes and secret handshakes, devoted to bad menu translations for social media boosts ;)

2026-05-21 17:11:08 UTC

It's probably time to retire the verb "google" like they asked us to in 2006.

2026-05-09 17:07:41 UTC

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I noticed there was one frame of that GIF where you can see a Muppet's skeleton. I'm slightly disappointed it isn't a human arm.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/545/710/781/910/652/original/a7b6dc4e90909ed0.gif

2026-05-09 17:01:53 UTC

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+See also Jocelyn Bell-Burnell.

2026-05-09 16:57:07 UTC

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Muppets are highly recommended, even as an adult. Basically a traditional variety show by being run by a bunch of well-meaning but anarchic puppets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-4xyg4PU-U

2026-05-09 16:55:42 UTC

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Franklin is a good one. I was in a pub quiz once where the quizmaster gave a correct answer and a bonus point for "Rosalind Franklin's lab notes" in answer to "What did Crick and Watson discover?"

2026-05-09 16:53:10 UTC

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Dexter's lab is just at the tail end of my adolescence (although some would argue I've still not left it!). Q is a good one, but I'm trying to go for real world people, cos otherwise it's obviously Beaker.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/545/653/017/743/980/original/86ea02427a653018.mp4

2026-04-25 23:28:45 UTC

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The film is similar the The Martian. Skips some of the detail (notably the whole process of evolving the Taumeoba), but does hint that they filmed that, so maybe a directors cut to follow. But still a brilliant, faithful version of the book, totally recommended. Nails the humour too.

2026-04-17 19:59:45 UTC

Doing my first full watch-through of #StargateSG1. Spotted Dwight "Howling Mad Murdoch", "Reginald Barclay" Schultz the moment I heard his voice, brilliant :)
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/421/816/374/905/035/original/ce11e74857451ac0.png

2026-04-15 22:31:46 UTC

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This is prized in some circles as once you dry it out it makes some of the best firelighting material in the world. Get it glowing and you can pack it away carefully, walk for 12 hours, unpack it and blow on it, and have another fire.

2026-04-15 22:26:10 UTC

There was a wooden framed couch in my uncle's holiday cottage we visited as kids in the 80s He donated it to me and J when we moved into an unfurnished house in 2010. Already rickety.
In 2016 we bought a bigger couch, I sanded it all back, yacht varnished it, turned it into a garden couch. Bit dodgy though.
It's finally succumbing to the elements. But one of my favourite fungi, Fomes fomentarius, or the hoof fungus, has taken hold.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/411/061/716/845/238/original/afba936e1f90195e.jpg

2026-04-10 23:44:56 UTC

GARGH! NASA making the same mistake as the Scottish qualifications people, spacecraft don't generally heat up on re-entry due to "friction", it's down to adiabatic compression mostly, squeeze a gas and it gets hot. Squeeze it more and it turns to a plasma. Squeeze that even more and it starts giving off high energy photons.
That's not friction.

2026-04-06 20:48:05 UTC

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Funnily enough, a popular technique in archaeological survey. Watch out for the "large rectilinear shadow" ;)

2026-04-06 20:46:02 UTC

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I stand corrected, mission control just said the "terminator looks very alien". Lovely description from the crew about how now they're seeing the far side "there's no part of the terminator that just doesn't look impossibly rugged". The far side is far more cratered as it hasn't had Earth as a shield.

2026-04-06 20:40:42 UTC

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Crew free to take photos of whatever they want, and both the photographers have gone with The Terminator. Seriously, no thought for Alien, straight for The Terminator.
(I jest, for anyone who doesn't know, the terminator in this context is the bright/dark bit of the lunar sphere, great for looking at stuff in high relief.)

2026-04-06 20:33:11 UTC

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No idea why, but I have a sudden urge to buy a Nikon 80-400mm zoom lens....
#Artemis

2026-04-06 20:21:57 UTC

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We're not so used to big time delays in communications these days, but there's no getting around it at this distance. The 2.6s delay between here, the Moon, and back, is noticeable. They're noticeably far away in terms of the speed of light. #Artemis

2026-04-06 19:53:55 UTC

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Toilet continues to be an issue, limits reached for the moment, pee bags etc to be used. But to be fair, this is the first translunar mission to *have* a toilet, and it's generally recognised that the major engineering issues in spaceflight are plumbing, humans, and human plumbing. #Artemis

2026-04-06 19:30:00 UTC

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Crew reporting that looking at the Moon in full sunlight, and switching back to a mostly dimmed cabin (to prevent light leakage impacting lunar photography) is "proving challenging" in terms of adapting eyesight.
An earlier solution was a single eyepatch, keep one eye dark adapted. #Artemis #SpacePirates

2026-04-06 18:26:16 UTC

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"Amaze, amaze, amaze" from mission control to #Artemis, nice #ProjectHailMary reference :)

2026-04-06 18:02:59 UTC

Carroll Crater, nice 🥰
#Artemis

2026-04-06 11:06:46 UTC

If I was on Artemis I'd spend the 40 minute radio blackout rigging all the clocks, logs, instrumentts etc to show that 6 hours had passed, then refuse to comment on what I'd seen on the far side.
This is probably why I'm not allowed on the Artemis.

2026-04-05 18:10:10 UTC

The Ender 3 Pro 3D printer I bought almost exactly 6 years ago (lockdown was the nudge I needed!) has started extruding erratically. Couldn't withdraw filament. Turns out the old advice still works: cranked the temp up briefly, boom. Can't be stuck if it's a liquid.

2026-04-04 18:56:22 UTC

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You've oddly reminded me of a spoof "He-Man" theme we'd song as kids:
"I have the power
To lift up a flower
In a hour or two..."
Assume the distance is floor to waist and we can even do some physics 🤣

2026-04-04 18:07:06 UTC

Grr. Manly welding gauntlets, for manly activities, like welding. Note too that they're not gloves. They're *gauntlets*, cos this is fabric armour.
Wait...have we been wearing Powerpuff Girls (or similar?) gloves with an extra felt layer all along?! I've long suspected the welding/Brony overlap is strong 🤣
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/347/747/805/452/166/original/79ec80c802755a58.jpg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/347/748/075/201/949/original/1cfd2c29b7061a41.jpg

2026-04-03 20:30:23 UTC

First day of the school holidays. So firing the tandoor up as per tradition. A couple of aubergines as it got all flamey coming up to temp (so baba ganoush, the only acceptable use of an aubergine in my book), then chicken tikka skewers followed by chicken legs, thighs, wings as it cooled a bit. Plus kachumba salad thing and shop bought naan, but done in the tandoor. Homemade naan done properly remains an objective, but damn is that an aquired skill.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/342/657/374/239/417/original/13240480000b0eee.jpg

2026-03-31 21:12:51 UTC

Cracked open the cyanotype stuff as an end of term thing for the 6th years (~18yrs). "Wait, so this is like science AND art?"
Well isn't everything ;)
I got a nice effect from a translucent plastic pipette, 6th years have been running around looking for feathers and making cool stuff. Luckily caught a couple of non-science photography students taking shots and gave them a couple of sheets with instructions too.
No pics till I clear copyright with the cyanophotographers...

2026-03-29 00:27:11 UTC

Today is the anniversary of me opening a bookshop after the clocks changed, and spending so much time responding to people banging on the door to ask why we're late opening ("we're not, you're an hour ahead") that we were late opening.
Yup, put up a sign, just not soon enough. Still, a world where people bang on bookshop doors at 8.30am is a good one.

2026-03-28 01:52:25 UTC

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I'm totally suggesting dumpling in the stew - suet type, litte glorious balls that fluff up and go crispy

2026-03-28 01:39:57 UTC

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Are you of a culture that does dumplings? If not, I have an epiphany for you.

2026-03-26 22:08:42 UTC

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See also UK slang: Trump (v/n): A fart/flatulence, or the act of creating one.

2026-03-26 01:00:37 UTC

Guess the reason for the photo?
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/292/765/017/186/794/original/5cec99862cf90197.jpg

2026-03-25 21:53:29 UTC

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Lovely way of putting it! I did a displacement demo earlier this week, aluminium foil in copper sulphate solution. Bugger all happens, of course, then I squirt in a little hydrochloric. And obviously drop a match in for pretty lights.
Titanium skinned aircraft like the SR71 had a similar issue with, IIRC, scratches from tools containing cobalt? Almost like the Gallium/Aluminium interaction?

2026-03-25 18:36:17 UTC

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Dad's PhD was on stress corrosion cracking in marine environments, he ended up working on the metallurgy of submarines, aircraft, climbing kit and oil rigs. I can listen to him talk about it for hours. Takeaway advice: don't clean your safety critical aluminium with steel wool.

2026-03-19 21:30:37 UTC

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Hey, that happens all the time. When I (an atheist) first saw The Matrix I assumed it was mainly a Christ allegory, as well as being e great bit of SF. Later turned out to be more a trans allegory. We all read our own things into stuff, and the best pieces of work allow many interpretations.
Grace being a single surviving human of a trinity sacrificed to save humanity? Meh, yeah, maybe Weir did mean that, among other things. Good storytelling.

2026-03-19 21:20:07 UTC

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Gave my copy to a friend, so I can't check it right now, but "Project Hail Mary" by Andy Weir is a good bet ;)

2026-03-19 21:16:10 UTC

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Exactly. Not every person who throws a Hail Mary pass is a Christian, but that's still the etymology.

2026-03-19 21:06:40 UTC

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Yes, it absolutely is a religious reference. No, that does not mean the book is a Christian allegory. It's a piece of hard science fiction that acknowledges our current worldwide culture and society, which includes religions. But yes, the reference is specifically that Mary, otherwise the gag with the main character's name doesn't work.

2026-03-19 20:54:20 UTC

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Hail Mary is literally full of Grace, the gag is right there.
The book also had other missions, by other international collaborations, that drew similar names from other religions/philosophies

2026-03-19 18:06:41 UTC

"And some people say 'These people, they're not even trying to be British. They come here, they bring their own culture, their food, speak their own language, and try to take over the whole bloody place.'
Dunno. Sounds pretty British to me."
~Trevor Noah
😂

2026-03-19 17:21:59 UTC

Ladybirds are coming out of hibernation and there's a whole not-entirely-PG-rated party going on.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/256/982/847/310/489/original/87b0c0468cbf049f.jpg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/256/983/199/415/323/original/2ade666bce763c2c.jpg

2026-03-17 19:53:36 UTC

In case you missed it, new particle just dropped. The LHC has confirmed (and in ridiculous accuracy) the existence of a heavier version of the proton.
A proton is made of 3 quarks, up/up/down. This new particle is made of charm/charm/down, where the charm quark is basically the same as the up, just heavier.
So not groundbreaking like finding supersymmetric particles, but still cool. Further confirmation that the standard model of particle physics is reasonable.
https://home.cern/news/news/physics/lhcb-collaboration-discovers-new-proton-particle

2026-03-17 18:42:07 UTC

Chatting to a student who happened to be in the same screening of #ProjectHailMary as me. She was asking how much of the science was real. (Long answer short, enough to make it a very respectable bit of "hard" science fiction.)
We established that if Rocky's species did the Scottish physics course they've done Nat5 and some, but not all, of Higher. Their Craft, Design & Technology courses are significantly more advanced though.

2026-03-14 21:38:40 UTC

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Stuff from the book I wish they'd done in more detail: astrophage biophysics, Stratt's virtual immunity from any action, the building of common terms between Grace & Rocky, particularly the Iron/26 gag.
But it's a fairly long film anyway, and modern films tend to too long for my taste, I think they distilled the important stuff for the story well.
But if you watch it and like it, and haven't read the book, READ THE BOOK! 😎

2026-03-14 21:33:26 UTC

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Possible error - loading a microbiology centrifuge with 2 tubes, both next to each other rather than balanced. But seeing the abuse the handheld mass spectrometer gets, the lab kit on the ship is pretty robust.
What looks like an error but isn't: Travel time given by the ship's computer for a ~12 lightyear journey is given as 4 and a bit years. But as Dr Becky notes in her interviews, that's realistic time dilation. Threw me slightly while watching as I briefly tried doing sums.

2026-03-14 19:52:26 UTC

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Also, pretty good film to take kids to.

2026-03-14 19:51:38 UTC

#ProjectHailMary - skipped over some aspects, lingered a bit long on others, but generally a pretty faithful adaptation. Very pretty, and got the humour.

2026-03-13 18:54:08 UTC

[@Theorem_Poem](https://mstdn.social/@Theorem_Poem ) Don't know if I mentioned it before, but tonight I finished the jar of garam masala that J bought in Iceland when she was performing there! There's got to be some sort of remotest-spice-sold record?
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/223/382/077/803/702/original/f39d9d56ada8157a.jpg

2026-03-13 16:01:06 UTC

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Here's the Forbidden Chocolate mostly dried out.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/222/688/588/986/588/original/bb9648fbc0b62bff.jpg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/222/688/843/569/503/original/d4734d33ec37191f.jpg

2026-03-12 22:44:07 UTC

Less than two days to go before I see Project Hail Mary. Not been this excited about a film in a long, long time, I normally wait for it to come out on DVD or Netflix or whatever. Saw a review recently which described it as "weirdly childish"....guessing they hadn't read the book, and that's encouraging in terms of nailing the tone.

2026-03-11 23:09:43 UTC

Colleague in one of my 3D printing jobs wanted to recreate a Simpsons prop in real life as a present for a friend. I just did the cane (the detail is IMMACULATE), other colleagues volunteered their time and skills for other bits.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/213/046/489/580/442/original/dd71a873876db35c.jpg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/213/057/732/223/871/original/ad93edf2ecbefe8a.png

2026-03-11 21:39:09 UTC

Must not eat forbidden chocolate...
(Disposing of some past-its-best iron iii nitrate with sodium carbonate, the brown precipitate is iron oxide...rust...that can go in the bin, the rest can go down the drain.)
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/212/699/791/009/461/original/82fd7229a2d662f6.jpg

2026-03-10 17:17:30 UTC

There used to be a startup where you could buy intentionally thermally inefficient computers to install in your house as radiators. They were networked, and the company would sell off distributed computing power and split the money with you, essentially subsidising your domestic heating.
This should be the model for LLM/ML, no huge data centres, just very cheap electric heating for households. But that won't happen in the current bubble because investment is locked in to a different model.

2026-03-02 21:16:08 UTC

RE: https://bildung.social/@phyphox/116159553496495606
Brilliant, a similar approach to my recent "can you track the concentration of a solution with the pitch you get pinging the beaker" idea 😎👍
#note1w4p…m6cu

2026-02-28 00:36:47 UTC

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But personally I think we should expose kids to science "way beyond their level" far more. I remember a spectroscopy image in a Heather Couper book when I was maybe 8 years old. Fascinated me enough to go into astrophysics and I finally understood it at 18.

2026-02-28 00:18:57 UTC

At an IoP "Girls In Physics" event recently. Multiple presentations for our S1 group (maybe 12yrs) which were technically far beyond them in terms of curriculum but still fun. PhD students from Glasgow did themselves proud with a fun polarised light workshop, and Dundee Uni had some nice exoplanet/spectroscopy stuff on the go.
I got to yell "Oh, look, spectrum!" on the bus trip home 😉
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/145/382/063/416/106/original/2c5025e0d976538c.jpg

2026-02-23 21:27:51 UTC

Made some ferrofluid at work today. Give it a day to soak, and given enough time I might get some cool video tomorrow. Fun exercise if you have access to a few grams of laser printer toner, vegetable oil, and a neodimium magnet.

2026-02-22 20:32:51 UTC

Some fun rocks on the Easter Ross coast. Some of this is Old Red Sandstone, a pretty old type. There's differential erosion on the go, and the potholes/honeycomb structure is a result of wave action. Any small dimple is more likely to catch a grain of sand or pebble, which rolls around grinding the dimple deeper, letting it catch a larger stone, grinding more, etc etc.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/116/165/305/950/032/original/17a3702a874fe4a9.jpg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/116/166/665/728/435/original/c0b69429323ef3cc.jpg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/116/168/179/811/460/original/b81a4e5818f42740.jpg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/116/169/446/869/805/original/fa187abdbb526dbf.jpg

2026-02-21 21:34:10 UTC

It's time for the webring (or similar) to make a comeback. Do you have your own science/tech/related blog etc? Give me a shout, I'll add yours to thegeoff.net if it fits. Ideally self-hosted, but hey, practicalities. Particularly just folk messing about on their own projects, not already-popular stuff.

2026-02-18 19:14:27 UTC

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But that aside, it's incredible tech, and the advances in my lifetime are stunning. Just for the basic kit, which would give a fairly reliable result on "suspect DNA" v sample, or paternity tests in fairly unrelated subjects (e.g. it's not two brothers being tested as the father) we're looking at under £2k for the kit and reasonably cheap consumables.
We've got the kit at school, never been used as it's more a specialist student project. But good to have an actual run-through on using it.

2026-02-18 19:03:22 UTC

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To their credit, they covered the fact that this world-changing, Nobel prize winning tech was developed by somebody who was "high". They left it at that.
Nope, not having a good idea after smoking a joint, which is surprisingly common in science and maths, but a pretty big dose of LSD and then going for a drive. Interesting character...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaXKQ70q4KQ

2026-02-18 18:47:25 UTC

Fun "Techiebears Picnic" today, one of our too-rare school science technician meet-ups. Somebody from Timstar, one of our main suppliers, ran a PCR and electrophoresis course (basically DNA fingerprinting), very handy for me being a physicist by training and trying to brush-up on my biology.

2026-02-13 17:08:21 UTC

One of my chemistry students made drugs. Aspirin, in this case. They confirmed they'd nailed it with a very accurate melting point measurement and then some thin layer chromatography. Yield was a little low, but hey, first go using high school kit. I made them a little souvenir, 0.06g of it in a tiny handmade phial.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/064/409/903/328/997/original/3d42c434fa02bdfb.jpg

2026-02-04 18:39:08 UTC

Fun one from today: student was measuring copper content in a penny by dissolving it in conc nitric acid and doing science titrations on it. I'm left with remainder of the copper/acid to dispose of (fair enough, my job and all). So I neutralise it with bicarb, filter precipitate off for the bin, filtrate can go down the sink.
But what are these tiny blue/green crystals forming overnight in the (water based) filtrate?
(Awaits obligatory AS reference ;)
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/013/810/152/691/661/original/6706ad4eada88201.jpg

2026-02-02 18:08:39 UTC

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HA! I'm almost exactly halfway through too, but was convinced it was a useful enough video already. The advanced proofs hinted at do seem to involve your brain turning inside out though, we'll see!

2026-02-02 18:05:01 UTC

One of my favourite mathematical theorems is "The Hairy Ball Theorem". Partly cos the name is funny, which makes students curious, partly because an upshot is that you can prove (with caveats) that there is always somewhere on the Earth with no wind, and partly that it's simple enough for me, undergrad-maths-ish, to explain it to high-school students. Plus it's vector fields, something they will meet and sounds scary without this kind of intro.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHdbsHFs2P0

2026-01-29 18:33:14 UTC

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The actual tandoor is full of cracks, as you say, hey, no problem, it breaths! Problem with the lid cracking is if/when it falls in it risks totally smashing the rest of the oven.