Posted in links, outreach, web on March 30, 2009 | 3 Comments »
The cool idea of hackerspace is growing fast:
Via WIRED:
DIY Freaks Flock to ‘Hacker Spaces’ Worldwide
A little more digging, and I find that there’s some already running in the UK, and one planned for Birmingham. Reminds me, I’ve been thinking about on organising an electronics masterclass/summer school. It would be mainly aimed at A-level students (the [...]
Posted in experimental insights on March 29, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Following on from the posts about miniature circuits here and here, I thought I’d show some pictures of the sample box where the chips are housed before they are cooled down in the dilution refigerator.
As you might expect, there is more signal filtering before the DC lines enter the sample box. The filtering is again [...]
Posted in cool physics, links on March 16, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Via The Observer Effect
This is amazing: A 3D virtual tour of the LHC. Complete with soundtrack of people making busy working noises
Posted in learnin' stuff, psychological ponderings, transhumanism, web on March 15, 2009 | 3 Comments »
I realised I’m spending an increasing amount of time online. The online world does seem to be developing into some form of alternate existence. I went outside for a walk, and it felt a little alien. Everyone was moving really slowly and it suddenly struck me that there wasn’t very much information coming in from [...]
Posted in experimental insights on March 12, 2009 | 2 Comments »
I talked a little while ago about a prototype miniature low temperature LCR filter I made. Well I’m making the real things now, so I thought I’d share the process as they come together. Here is the first stage: The metalwork. This doesn’t actually take very long.
Each filter needs a base plate (top metal pieces [...]
Posted in book reviews, transhumanism on March 11, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I’ve just been reading ‘Shaping Things’ by Bruce Sterling (2005). It’s a very interesting and cute book, I’d certainly recommend it. It’s about design, the interaction between people and objects, and how society can be catagorised into historical ‘eras’ determined by this interaction. The book talks about the SPIME – totally interactive and recyclable [...]
Posted in cool physics, outreach, superconductors on March 10, 2009 | 4 Comments »
An article I co-authored on superconductivity has been featured in Catalyst magazine, a magazine about scientific research aimed at secondary school pupils and teachers.
The full article can be downloaded here:
CATALYST ARTICLE – SUPERCONDUCTIVITY
And yes it does feature an embarrassing photo in which I’m wiring up a superconducting magnet…
Posted in learnin' stuff, links, web on March 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Via Swans on Tea
This is a really good idea:
ACADEMIC EARTH
Undergraduate-level (as far as I can tell) lectures for everyone to watch given by notable academics. This kind of thing really helps keep up the SNR of the internet! You can also download them as podcasts
Posted in cake on March 5, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I have dedicated a Condensed Matter Research page to cake.
Well, cake club to be precise (See this previous post for explanation)
LINK TO CAKE CLUB PAGE
Photographs of all the cakes baked so far can be seen there. I couldn’t be bothered reposting them all here. However, I will highlight my own contribution to the cake club [...]
Posted in experimental insights on March 4, 2009 | 5 Comments »
For the last few weeks I have been designing and building new miniature low temperature filters. The idea of these little filter boxes is to be relatively good low pass filters (with no re-entrance of transmission at multi-GHz frequencies). The standard way to do this is to use a technology known as the powder filter. [...]
