A matter of scale (ice spikes and silicon pillars)

One of the great things about science is how interlinked everything is once you start looking deeply enough. One example of this came a couple of months back when I was reviewing the electron micrographs from the latest experiment. My work involves the growing of meso-scale (about a 100th of a millimeter) pillars on a …

Death of a pioneer

On Friday 16th September, Gordon Gould the inventor of the laser died. Gould claimed that the idea and principles for the laser came to him one afternoon in 1957. His lab book details his ideas on a page under the title “Some rough calculations on the feasibility of a LASER: Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission …

Open House

Next weekend is the London Open House weekend. Saturday sees me visiting family in Tiptree for the family tree project, so I’m looking for somewhere local to visit on Sunday. That’s off now, so I might be able to do both days. The search on the website is, however, pretty badly done and, in fact, …