Schrödinger's Kitten

Irreverent Science for Everyone

Wednesday 24 March 2010

The Lack of Perspective Vortex

  • micro
  • relativity

The first thing I did when I got to university was measure the charge mass ratio of the electron. Well, actually, the first thing I did was to take off my top hat and start messing my room up, but the first thing I did in labs was that. I then proceeded to spend four years peering indecently closely at the components of nature, either measuring them, calculating with them, or cursing their discoverers. After that, I fear I may have got a bit blasé about minute measurements. You know you've got a problem when you consider 100 nanometres to be 'quite big, really', an additional nanosecond a day to be worth worrying about, and a 0.1 degree difference to affect your cooking.

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Thursday 10 April 2008

Nanotech for the Enthusiastic Amateur

  • micro
  • opensource
  • nanotech

While I was looking for a diagram to put in my recent research project (to illustrate atomic force microscopy, because I couldn't face drawing it), I found The Open Source Handbook of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology. This is great! Not only for us students who cannot manage to stay awake in our nanotech lectures (sorry Prof. Petrashov...) and who are prepared to chance our coursework on internet hearsay; but also for everyone else who doesn't want to pay £3000 (or more?) per year of education, but does want to know about the tech we're building the future out of.

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