by Len Fisher | 7 Apr 2021 | IgNobel Prize, News, Stray Thoughts, Think Like a Scientist: Media and Writing
I appeared on the front page of Wikipedia today (April 7th 2021). “Did you know?” asked the editors “that Len Fisher won the 1999 Ig Nobel Prize for physics for his research on the optimal way to dunk a biscuit?” You may or may not have known this. Certainly the story...
by Len Fisher | 9 Oct 2018 | Think Like a Scientist: Media and Writing
I just came across a link to a segment of the BBC Radio 4 programme “More or Less”, where I debated with Simon Singh the value of equations in the media. “Debated” is really not the right word, since we were on the same side when it came to the...
by Len Fisher | 2 Nov 2016 | News, Stray Thoughts, Think Like a Scientist: Media and Writing
Dateline: November 2nd, 2016. Staying on Bali, and idly glancing at the right-hand NASA topographic map of Bali from space, the similarity to the left-hand image of comet P67 taken from the Rosetta spacecraft suddenly struck me. Yes, I know that I have reflected...
by Len Fisher | 30 Sep 2015 | News, Stray Thoughts, Think Like a Scientist: Media and Writing
“Whatever happened to colloid science? Has it been totally supplanted by the young upstart known as nanoscience? Or is it still with us, lurking in the background, perhaps even preparing for a comeback?” In my Chemistry World article The Birth of Something Small...
by Len Fisher | 14 Aug 2015 | Mini Stories from Science, Think Like a Scientist: Media and Writing
Adapted from Chapter 5 of “Weighing the Soul” When I am introduced to strangers as a “chemist”, most of them conclude either that I dispense prescriptions or that I spend my time in a smelly laboratory mixing “chemicals” together to see what will happen....
by Len Fisher | 16 Jul 2015 | News, Think Like a Scientist: Media and Writing
Dutch Universities have announced a plan to boycott the Dutch publisher Elsevier. The firm now publishes a wide range of scientific books and journals, in which some of my own articles have even appeared. But how many people know of the role that they played in...
