Thinking about a recent comment, I tried the following experiment. I copied the second and third paragraphs from the Headmaster’s introduction on the Summer Fields website. I pasted this text into an online translation website. Firstly I translated the paragraphs into French, then that translation into German and finally back into English. At each translation, some …
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Category:Just For Fun
How Many Faces…
How many faces can you see in the branches of this tree? Clever isn’t it – who are they?
Moon Not Made Of Cheese…
Yesterday, NASA reported that their LCROSS mission to find water on the moon had been successful. They found lots of it, with about 100kg of water vapour and ice being thrown up as they crashed into the Cabeus crater near the moon’s south pole. “We are ecstatic,” said Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist and principal investigator at …
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Thinking For Yourself…
As I think I mentioned in another post, thinking critically about the world around you is a fundamental scientific skill. It does not mean that you need to criticise everything, just that you consider the ‘credibility of evidence’. This means that you ask yourself how believable a story or a scientific claim is. When scientists look …
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They Might Be Giants…
I love They Might Be Giants so I thought I would post this video for one of their songs. Many of their songs are full of wonderful geeky science and this is no exception. It mentions that every element present in the sun is in a gaseous state because of the high temperatures. The sun is mostly made …
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Just For The Halibut…
I love extraordinary units. You know that I always make a fuss about including your units and showing your working because it is important that those marking your work should be able to follow your thought processes even if you make errors in logic. They are mostly more interested in how you think than whether …
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iPad…
I hope you are having a lovely weekend. You have probably seen this but just in case you have not, I thought I would share this video from Peter Serafinowicz marking the release of Apple’s iPad. I was certainly impressed by his presentation and will be looking into acquiring one as soon as possible.
Scary Photo…
Click here if you want to see a scary photo.
Practice Makes Perfect…
The guitar is a fairly simple machine. It converts kinetic energy (the movement of the strings) into sound energy. The pitch of the sound is governed by the weight of the string and where on the fretboard the player puts his fingers. The thicker strings vibrate more slowly than thinner ones and hence produce a …
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Long Leave Photo…
I was amused by these two photos, which are such simple illusions. and I wondered whether you might try to create some photographic illusions if you have any spare time over Long Leave. Let me know if you produce anything you would like to have published here. And another thing… Some time ago I asked for further translations …
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