I’ve met a lot of people who don’t try to understand scientific ideas because they are “too difficult” or “boring”. But if you’ve been following this blog so far, I hope that you agree that there is nothing difficult about the ideas I’ve used so far. It is possible to explain them in simple English.… Continue reading 16.15: Science education

Have you ever noticed that car wheels sometimes go the wrong way round in movies and on television? When a car is moving forwards, the wheels go round in a clockwise direction. But sometimes they seem to go the other way round. This effect occurs because moving pictures consist of a sequence of still pictures… Continue reading 16.14 Aliasing – why car wheels can go the wrong way round in movies

I suggest that you read posts 16.2, 16.4 and 16.12 before this. We have seen that an object won’t change its velocity unless it is pushed or pulled in some way (post 16.2). Here we will think about what happens when its velocity does change. To keep things simple, we’ll think about an object moving… Continue reading 16.13 Changes in movement

I suggest that you read posts 16.2 and 16.4 before this. Remember that whether or not something is moving depends on the state of motion of the observer (Post 16.4). So, when we measure movement, we measure it compared to the movement of an observer. Providing the observer is not changing speed or direction, this… Continue reading 16.12 Measuring movement

Appointments of scientists and engineers in industry are often very dependent on the procedures of Human Resources departments. They often place a lot of reliance on results from “assessment centres” that provide general information about a person but not about his or her specialist abilities. This general information may be very useful – but it… Continue reading 16.11 Giving a scientist a job