Casimir and me

Casimir and me

This mini story is about me and my last (maybe really my last) scientific paper. It is also a story of how science really works – through people, rather than structures or organizations or committees. It started with Twitter, which is a major way that I keep in...
143. Mercury, Shakespeare and me

143. Mercury, Shakespeare and me

Very proud to have been awarded a prize in the Royal Australian Chemical Institute’s competition for Stories from the Periodic Table. Here is my winning entry: Mercury, Shakespeare and me Mercury is the only metal that is liquid at room temperature, and it...
142. A mad magnet tale

142. A mad magnet tale

This story of the generation of an ultra-strong magnetic field (https://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/nanotechnology/magnetic-field-record-set-with-a-bang-1200-tesla) and the subsequent disaster reminds me of a story that I was told by a very prominent...
141. A world made of blueberries

141. A world made of blueberries

My good friend and cooleague (cool colleague) Anders Sandberg has calculated what would happen if the world suddenly turned into blueberries. I offer it as an example of how scientists think; one that might be used to help schoolchildren, and even beginning university...