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The Fluid Mechanics of Planetary Atmospheres

February 16, 2015

In my last post I went over a really powerful bit of physics called fluid mechanics, which describes the flow of fluid through a system. The main equation in this framework is the momentum equation; the Navier-Stokes equation.This equation is nye on impossible to solve analytically in it’s full grotesque glory, so in the last post I discussed some of...

Some Fluid Mechanics Basics

January 23, 2015

At the moment I’m intently studying fluid mechanics for an exam on planetary science. As you may have guessed, the fluid mechanics in question is for modelling planetary atmospheres, but the mathematics is universally applicable. I’ve wanted to learn fluid mechanics for many years so I thought I’d just go through some of the basics...

Radiative Transfer in Planetary Atmospheres: An Overview

January 1, 2015

A little while ago I got carried away on a little post which discussed a really cool little bit of physics called radiative transfer. As I said then, radiative transfer is a technique that you can use to study how energy, in the form of electromagnetic radiation, moves through material. In that post, which you can...

Dust in the Ointment

October 18, 2014

It’s nice every now and then to have a slight reminder why your work is valuable. At the moment I’m part of a research team, working in the astrophysics department at the University of Exeter,  that are studying dust. I know exactly what you’re thinking, how interesting can dust be? The truth is that interstellar...

The Basics of Radiative Transfer

April 28, 2014

It’s deep in exam season for me at the moment, which means that if you try talking to me, chances are that I’ll have my head in a book. I talked a while back about solving radiative transfer problems with Monte Carlo methods, but I never actually went very far into how radiative transfer works....

My New Project – Axe Engine

October 25, 2013

Despite being deep into the 3rd year of both a physics degree and deep into a masters project, I’ve decided to try something quite ambitious. For ages, I’ve wanted to try my hand at writing a 3D game engine, and until now I’ve had neither the confidence or the knowledge to carry off such a...

Mini Javascript Hackathon – Tix Clock

July 31, 2013

I’ve spent a lot of time recently writing C++, Python and Shell Script. These languages are great, but I fancied taking a break from them to go back to my old stomping ground. Earlier today I remembered about the existence of a cool little, almost completely useless, piece of geek tech known as the Tix...

Gambling with Statistics – Monte Carlo Methods

July 20, 2013

Hey all! In my recent work I’ve been using numerical simulations involving radiative transfer, which basically  means transferring energy via radiation such as light; in the form of photon packets. The way these simulations are run is via a method known quite widely in the physics world called ‘Monte Carlo Methods’. It took me a...

Barenaked Ladies – My Alternative ‘Best of’

May 13, 2012

There’s something that has always really bugged me out the music industry; greatest hits compilations. These albums supposedly consist of the best music that an artist has done. However, for the most part I’ve found this to be radically untrue. The way that most of these albums are compiled is by looking at the chart...

What I’ve been Listening To – April 2012

April 13, 2012

This month has been chocker block of tunes I’ve been listening to, owing to having a lot more free time than usual. So, I’m going to limit myself a little. Without further ado, let’s get started. Chris Rea – Julia If you’ve never heard of Chris Rea, he’s a veteran guitarist and song writer through...

What I’ve been listening to – Jan / Feb 2012

February 23, 2012

I’ve been once again neglecting my blogging duties, nothing new there, right? I thought I’d ease back into it with doing a nice simple post. Let’s get going! The Popular Thing – Jukebox the Ghost Seriously! This song is excellent to the highest order. I picked this up from a friend’s tumblr blog. I just...

Lesson Learned from the First Term

January 11, 2012

Today has been the my first exam at university, I’m not going to lie, I’m not very confident about how it went. It seemed like the writer of the paper in question had in-fact decided to almost avoid everything I’d revised. This crippling blow has forced me to look back over my techniques over the...