True tritium tales, toxic and non-toxic
The American public's fears of tritium contributed to the closure of a famous neutron facility
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Read article: True tritium tales, toxic and non-toxic
Spotting craziness in cloud-cuckoo-land
Few things in life are utterly black or white. Even scientific ideas come in shades of “truth”, which is arrived at differently in different kinds of science. There are other gradations to...
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Straight choices
Currently there are, at most, five centres operating in the front line of particle physics: CERN and DESY in Europe, Fermilab and Stanford in the US, and KEK in Japan. How many of these laboratories a...
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Burst bangers and brain busters
Why is it that you can warm your hands by blowing gently against them and cool them by blowing hard? The answer requires a clear understanding of physics and a rudimentary knowledge of the workings of...
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Physics and work
The report was commissioned from the Institute for Employment Studies by the physics programme of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to examine the views of organizations t...
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Do we need nuclear power?
Does the world needs nuclear power? Peter Hodgson and Dennis Anderson take up the debate
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A universe in the life of an oxygen atom
In 1984 – the year made famous by George Orwell – I attended a physics conference in the city of Leipzig, East Germany. It was my first visit since I had been a student there 16 years befo...
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Vote for teachers
The real show-stopper for science is a shortage of school teachers in general, and a chronic shortage of science teachers in particular, that threatens the economic prosperity of the country in a know...
Feynman returns to centre stage
David Goodstein reviews QED by Peter Parnell
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Reflecting on the performance and challenges of UK physics
It has been two years since I was last at congress: two years is a long time in physics and an even longer time in politics, where the unit of measurement is daily crises. Physicists have achieved som...
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