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Just posted the second video of my little foray into philosophy (following the previous video about Harry Potter).

This time I'm talking with Stephen Mumford in the first of a few clips about sport.

Professor Mumford's particularly interested sports spectators.

This first section is quite general, but in future clips we'll be focusing more on football (the soccer variety, that is).



PhilosphyFile on YouTube

Thanks to Sixty Symbols viewer Connor Hause who posted this picture to our Facebook page.

Connor has fashioned some pretzels into the shape of two important symbols of physics - lambda and h-bar.


Connor says: "Inspired by your videos, I made pretzels of my 2 favorite symbols. Thought you'd like to see. I picked h-bar because I have been studying Max Planck recently and Lamda as a tribute to Einstein's self proclaimed 'greatest mistake': the cosmological constant."

Below are some videos on the topics (we did h instead of h-bar)...

I just posted a video to Test Tube about the imminent retirement of Professor Roger Bowley.

Roger's been a physicist - and very popular lecturer - for 40 years.

As he packed up his office, I asked him a few questions about retirement.

Test Tube is all about these one-off moments in science, and retirement is something I'd never covered.

But is Roger really retiring? I'm not so sure.

Okay, he won't be doing any more lectures.

But I think he'll still be coming into the university and doing physics with his friends and collaborators.

After all, physics is Roger's hobby.

And perhaps more importantly (to me!) Roger has agreed to continue appearing in Sixty Symbols videos.

So Roger may be emptying his old office... And receiving his pension... But I suspect he'll still be a busy physicist.

Maybe he'll just have a bit more time in the garden and with his lovely wife.

I've just posted a video from our recent trip to Dublin.

Midway through the video (below), Dr Darren Walsh uses a clever contraption to count the atoms in his body (based on his weight).

A few people have asked to see the full details in the list.

Dr Walsh has kindly supplied it.



Oxygen Mass: 41.925 kg Atoms: 1.578273 x 10^27
Carbon Mass: 11.61 kg Atoms: 5.821916 x 10^26
Hydrogen Mass: 6.45 kg Atoms: 3.854385 x 10^27
Nitrogen Mass: 1.935 kg Atoms: 8.320665 x 10^25
Calcium Mass: 967.5 g Atoms: 1.453978 x 10^25
Phosphorus Mass: 645 g Atoms: 1.254234 x 10^25
Potassium Mass: 161.25 g Atoms: 2.484017 x 10^24
Sulphur Mass: 161.25 g Atoms: 3.028875 x 10^24
Sodium Mass: 96.75 g Atoms: 2.534716 x 10^24
Chlorine Mass: 96.75 g Atoms: 1.643656 x 10^24
Magnesium Mass: 32.25 g Atoms: 7.991844 x 10^23
Iron Mass: 0.387 g Atoms: 4.174249 x 10^21
Fluorine Mass: 2.3865 g Atoms: 7.565841 x 10^22
Zinc Mass: 2.064 g Atoms: 1.901418 x 10^22
Silicon Mass: 1.29 g Atoms: 2.766434 x 10^22
Rubidium Mass: 0.2967 g Atoms: 2.090874 x 10^21
Strontium Mass: 0.2967 g Atoms: 2.039516 x 10^21
Bromine Mass: 0.18705 g Atoms: 1.409945 x 10^21
Lead Mass: 0.10965 g Atoms: 3.187365 x 10^20
Copper Mass: 0.0645 g Atoms: 6.113421 x 10^20
Aluminium Mass: 0.056115 g Atoms: 1.252637 x 10^21
Cadmium Mass: 0.04644 g Atoms: 2.488263 x 10^20
Cerium Mass: 0.036765 g Atoms: 1.580373 x 10^20
Barium Mass: 0.019995 g Atoms: 8.769378 x 10^19
Tin Mass: 0.01548 g Atoms: 7.854101 x 10^19
Iodine Mass: 0.01032 g Atoms: 4.897965 x 10^19
Titanium Mass: 0.008385 g Atoms: 1.055066 x 10^20
Boron Mass: 0.044505 g Atoms: 2.479453 x 10^21
Selenium Mass: 0.012255 g Atoms: 9.348007 x 10^19
Nickel Mass: 0.00903 g Atoms: 9.266406 x 10^19
Chromium Mass: 0.001548 g Atoms: 1.793135 x 10^19
Manganese Mass: 0.010965 g Atoms: 1.202121 x 10^20
Arsenic Mass: 0.01677 g Atoms: 1.348152 x 10^20
Lithium Mass: 0.0019995 g Atoms: 1.735051 x 10^20
Mercury Mass: 0.012255 g Atoms: 3.679738 x 10^19
Caesium Mass: 0.0013545 g Atoms: 6.138313 x 10^18
Molybdenum Mass: 0.008385 g Atoms: 5.262907 x 10^19
Germanium Mass: 0.008385 g Atoms: 6.953443 x 10^19
Cobalt Mass: 0.0013545 g Atoms: 1.384305 x 10^19
Antimony Mass: 0.007095 g Atoms: 3.509624 x 10^19
Silver Mass: 0.000645 g Atoms: 3.601465 x 10^18
Niobium Mass: 0.1032 g Atoms: 6.690322 x 10^20
Zirconium Mass: 0.387 g Atoms: 2.55514 x 10^21
Lanthanum Mass: 0.00903 g Atoms: 3.915446 x 10^19
Tellurium Mass: 0.00774 g Atoms: 3.65345 x 10^19
Gallium Mass: 0.00774 g Atoms: 6.686175 x 10^19
Yttrium Mass: 0.007095 g Atoms: 4.806566 x 10^19
Bismuth Mass: 0.007095 g Atoms: 2.044842 x 10^19
Thallium Mass: 0.007095 g Atoms: 2.090835 x 10^19
Indium Mass: 0.0001806 g Atoms: 9.473721 x 10^17
Gold Mass: 0.00903 g Atoms: 2.761265 x 10^19
Scandium Mass: 0.00903 g Atoms: 1.209801 x 10^20
Tantalum Mass: 0.00903 g Atoms: 3.00571 x 10^19
Vanadium Mass: 0.01677 g Atoms: 1.982778 x 10^20
Thorium Mass: 0.00008385 g Atoms: 2.17649 x 10^17
Uranium Mass: 0.00008385 g Atoms: 2.121711 x 10^17
Samarium Mass: 0.00000645 g Atoms: 2.583689 x 10^16
Tungsten Mass: 0.00000645 g Atoms: 2.113161 x 10^16
Beryllium Mass: 0.000003225 g Atoms: 2.155324 x 10^17
Radium Mass: 0.00000000000000645 g Atoms: 1.718954 x 10^07

And here is the automatically generated pic of Dr Walsh on the scales at Science Gallery!

The latest video on Sixty Symbols features a new team member.

Professor Mark Fromhold is in our new video about chaos and the butterfly effect.

Let's hope he'll help out with more videos soon!



Another seldom-seen face you may have noticed is my own... I swapped places with Professor Laurence Eaves after he struggled at the snooker table.

Maybe "Professor Cam" could be a regular feature!?

Our latest film on Periodic Table of Videos features Dr Samantha (Sam) Tang at home wearing a plaster.

She snapped her achilles tendon a few weeks back.

As an outreach scientist, Sam kindly agreed to feature her injury for a video about the chemistry of plaster.



You may notice the graffiti on the plaster... A few people have asked about it already.

It was by Sam's sister and I'm told it was a series of funny lines from a YouTube video. Sam described the video as "a random animation we both like".

So, here it is:

I've posted the first Backstage Science video in a little while.

The project's main production period has ended for now, but I'm still putting together more films from all the footage.

There's still some really good ones to come.

The latest was inside an instrument called Engin-X - one of the many "hutches" at the end of "beam lines" at the ISIS neutron source.


Engin-X has more of an emphasis on engineering, so often it is probing things like the strength of metals, etc.

It also means sometimes the samples can be quite big (like plane wings).

For this reason, Engin-X is quite a big instrument.

Here's the video: