Everywhere I turn, all the talk is about the coronavirus, and it’s exhausting because I already deal with news of the coronavirus as part of my day-job. It’s impossible to catch people having conversations about anything else at all. I don’t blame them, of course, but it’s frustrating nonetheless. I must admit I relished the …
Tag archives: Electromagnetism
Chromodynamics: Gluons are just gonzo
One of the more fascinating bits of high-energy physics is the branch of physics called quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Don’t let the big name throw you off: it deals with a bunch of elementary particles that have a property called colour charge. And one of these particles creates a mess of this branch of physics because of its …
Getting started on superconductivity
After the hoopla surrounding and attention on particle physics subsided, I realized that I’d been riding a speeding wagon all the time. All I’d done is used the lead-up to (the search for the Higgs boson) and the climax itself to teach myself something. Now, it’s left me really excited! Learning about particle physics, I’ve …
Graphene the Ubiquitous
Every once in a while, a (revolutionary-in-hindsight) scientific discovery is made that’s at first treated as an anomaly, and then verified. Once established as a credible find, it goes through a period where it is subject to great curiosity and intriguing reality checks – whether it was a one-time thing, if it can actually be …