A Faustian Pact and the Chamber of Secrets

October 28, 2012

To Brocken’s tip the witches stream, The stubble’s yellow, the seed is green. There the crowd of us will meet. Lord Urian has the highest seat. In 1894, the physicist C.T.R. Wilson spent a few weeks away from the Cavendish laboratory in Cambridge working as a meteorological observer on the summit of Scotland’s highest mountain, Ben Nevis. For […]

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Inspirational Games

October 26, 2012

Arithmetical games are a great way to sharpen up your arithmetic. My Grandad taught me two classic games that gave me a familiarity with numbers before I was even old enough to go to school. These two games are Fives and Threes which is a dominoes game and Cribbage which is a card game. Fives […]

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Quantum Waves and the Rosetta Stone

October 20, 2012

Quantum Waves and the Rosetta Stone Thomas Young was born in 1773 in the small Somerset town of Milverton. He was a remarkable scientist with wide-ranging interests. By the age of 14 he was already fluent in Greek and Latin and over ten other languages both ancient and modern. The Great Puzzle of the Age […]

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What on Earth is a Boson?

October 20, 2012

The fundamental particles that physicists study fall into two distinct categories that behave in very different ways. The distinction between these two types of particles, known to physicists as bosons and fermions, is critical to the structure of the world around us. The particles from which matter is composed are fermions. These particles include electrons, […]

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The Great Comet of 2013

October 11, 2012

On 24th September a new comet was discovered by two amateur astronomers – Vitali Nevski in Belarus and Artyom Novichonok in Russia. Comets are discovered all the time and most pass on their way without creating much of a fuss, but this one seems to be rather special. The End of Civilisation It is thought […]

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Twinkle, twinkle little star

October 8, 2012

Twinkle, twinkle little star How I wonder what you are! In 1857, a whole new world of science was opened up by a sensational discovery made by two German scientists, Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff. Bunsen excitedly announced to a colleague: “At present Kirchhoff and I are engaged in a common work which doesn’t let […]

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Rocket Science

October 1, 2012

Rocket Science Reaching Earth orbit is an expensive business. The problem is that it takes a lot of rocket fuel to launch a payload, but the fuel adds considerably to the weight of the rocket, which means that even more fuel is required to launch the fuel, which again adds to the weight and so […]

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From Olympic Fireworks to Cosmic Ones

September 3, 2012

On 29th August the Paralympic Games were opened in London in spectacular fashion. The Opening Ceremony took scientific progress as its theme, in particular the launch of the modern age by the publication of Newton’s masterpiece – The Principia. So amidst the fireworks we were shown clockwork planetary systems and cosmic vistas, there were plenty […]

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Quantum Wave: From Radar to Quasar

August 26, 2012

On 6th August 2012 Sir Bernard Lovell died at the age of 98. Lovell was most famous for founding the magnificent Jodrell Bank radio telescope operated by the University of Manchester in the Northwest of England. He was one of the founders of a new science: radio-astronomy. Trams and Telescopes During the Second World War […]

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The New Edition of “Higgs Force” is Finally Here!

August 25, 2012

Well, it took longer than we’d hoped, but I’m delighted to say that the new edition of our first book is finally here. Totally redesigned and re-edited to take account of last month’s discovery of the Higgs Particle, we’re really proud of the new book. Higgs Force tells the story of the search for the […]

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