Education

2024

Microclimate change

A CO2 detective story in my flat

I love my new flat, but I'm getting headaches. There's not a lot of ventilation and I have a sense that just my breathing might be enough to alter my …

Rising tides

The future if ice caps melt

We explore the realities of melting ice caps—examining how sea levels might rise and the implications for our world. Is this a critical juncture for …

2023

Let's make rainbows 🌈

Creating digital rainbows with GPT4

I saw the most spectacular rainbow not long ago and wondered whether I could simulate it 🤔. I decided that, with the help of GPT, it would be totally doable and …

Taste of Tech

Is a tech career right for you?

I've seen how hard it can be for people to figure out if a career in tech is right for them and so I'm experimenting with an idea to help unblock peoples' …

Rubbish reality

Unmasking our landfill legacy

So, picture a landfill. It's essentially a gaping hole that swallows our waste, an insatiable beast. But exactly how insatiable is it? How gigantic are these …

2022

Grow your own food?

Unearthing the truth with guesstimation

Have you ever daydreamed about leading a self-sufficient life, growing all your food on a patch of land? It's an alluring fantasy, isn't it? But how feasible is …

Pickle power

Unblocking guesstimation gridlock with the geometric mean

Picture this – you're in a bustling city, London, to be precise, with a pickle in hand 🥒. Now imagine every pickle consumed in London over the span of a year, …

2021

Staggering scales

Guesstimating the number of atoms on earth

And, we get to add another tool to our toolbox today - scientific notation. It might sound a little complicated if you're new to it, but trust me, you'll soon …

Guesstimating the earth

A journey to the center of our planet

Today is all about doing your first guesstimate. We'll do it by embarking on a cool thought experiment together – trying to estimate the distance to the centre …

What is guesstimation?

The process of solving "impossible" problems

In this series, I'll show you how not to stress about big, impossible sounding problems, like "how many people are picking their nose right now?". The secret is …

2014

Plasma art

Sparking curiosity in science

The walls of physics departments are often lined with poster contributions from old conferences. The vast majority go without so much as a glance from visitors …