Friday, October 16, 2009

An interest in physics

I enjoy reading Gravity & Levity, ‘a blog devoted (mostly) to a conceptual discussion of the big ideas in physics’, which tries to do so after putting them through the ‘translation process Math → English.

Most recently I loved the story about quasiparticles on the beach which is was inspired by a Caribbean holiday & tells us that “there are very few true coincidences in physics, so if a piece of coral has the same sort of structure that a two-dimensional electron gas does, then they probably have some physics in common.”

Another one which gave real food for thought was Your body wasn’t built to last: a lesson from human mortality rates

If only school physics had been like this!

But just today I have learned that another physics graduate did play an important role in my very young life.

Alison Uttley author of the Little Grey Rabbit books was only the second woman to graduate from Manchester University with a physics degree (in 1906).

Now a poem she wrote while a student – called Argument - about her interest in womens suffrage has been rediscovered.


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