The average science experiment has two distinct parts to it. The part when you touch it and the part where you don’t. Some experiments require constant touching, but in general these needy experiments are rare. The vast majority require a bit of touching and a bit of standing and waiting Read more…
It’s been almost a year since I defended my PhD, but still I find myself considering what the main lessons from graduate school really were. Unlike undergraduate studies, there’s no real curriculum for doctoral studies beyond some perfunctory courses at the beginning and “research”, which takes a different shape for Read more…
Scientific progress is a tricky thing. Despite what you might think, the direction of science is not always forwards – sometimes as a species we can unlearn things which then take us hundreds of years to re-discover. Sometimes this is simply from ideas not being publicised enough and it slips Read more…
A very lucky 6 year old who currently lives rent free in my house, was given for Christmas, a subscription to a magazine called Whizz Pop Bang. This magazine is aimed at getting kids excited about science through really well-drawn cartoons, quizzes, experiments to do at home, and precisely zero ads Read more…
So in a slight change from my normal format I though it might actually be good to share some stuff that I use in the labs that is actually pretty amazing. Today – running my lab book from evernote. I’ve written before about electronic Lab books but I really felt Read more…
When I started at Cranfield Univeristy I had a brilliant idea. I wanted to look at my nice glass slides on the Atomic Force Microscope (AFM). I’d put some interesting chemicals on the glass and I was quite keen to see what they actually looked like. Besides, pretty pictures are Read more…
Last week I enjoyed a very nice break from the impossible amout of work I am doing at the moment and spent some time at home. As I have two children, spending time at home means that I have to have activities planned every day – like most parents I’ve Read more…