Robert Dixon

I’m a Christian, You Know?

Robert — Tue, 15 May 2012 22:42:20 +0000

Those who know me tend to know me as a scientific thinker and so I’m often accused of betraying my scientific and logical principles by believing in something inexplicable under the rules of logical reasoning. It’s true, I don’t pretend that I can logically explain the existence of God and I don’t believe anyone can! But logic itself is insufficient to explain the existence of what we can all see exists, which is something and not absolute emptiness. Not only should there be nothing but there should be no scientific laws to determine the behaviour of this nothingness, and in both cases logic fails to account for the reality. For this reason, there must be something beyond these rules and beyond human understanding. You see, logic all boils down to some fundamental assumptions. I will use the example of the unprovable mathematical assumption that 1=1. We know it to be true, though its validity has no basis in logic, and under the assumption that it’s true, its principles can be applied to a great many situations and the predictions we make hold to be true. My faith in God works in a similar way, the process starts with the acceptance of his existence, not with the rationalisation of it or the reasoning of it. Once you have made this acceptance, it can be applied to various situations and it will hold to be true. Just as I can’t explain why 1=1, I cannot explain why God exists but I know he does!

Physics gone wrong

Robert — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 00:28:35 +0000

We’ve all heard the stories of the FTL neutrinos that travelled from CERN in times of late. It had the scientists involved quite frustrated for some time. Today, I got a taste of their misery: granted, there weren’t millions of pounds invested into my project, but I personally invested a whole evening! I happen to know for a fact that an oscillating spring adheres to the laws of simple harmonic motion, but my data seem to disagree with me on that point. Ultimately, you could put it down to ‘bad data’, but we’re scientists! We’re supposed to account for this sort of thing, and indeed I did. I dedicated two pages to uncertainty calculations, but despite my best efforts, I really do put my failure down to ‘bad data’, a concept in which I used not to believe. Read my full report here.

Robocode

Robert — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 22:43:41 +0000

I went to the Computer Science department at the University of St. Andrews on Saturday, and was there introduced to a new game:

The concept is quite simple. Have you ever watched ‘Robot Wars’? Well it’s a similar thing, but everyone has mechanically identical robots, except they aren’t remotely controlled. They have to ‘think’ for themselves. Your job is program the artificial intelligence algorithm to get your robot to ‘out-smart’ the others. What a fantastic concept!

How to Repair a Calculator

Robert — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 22:49:25 +0000

A while ago, a friend of mine was going on an expedition to Peru and didn’t want to run the risk of his iPod loosing power. His cunning solution was to take the solar panels out of all the calculators he could find in order to build a solar charger to attach to the top of his rucksack. For a while, this wasn’t an issue until the battery in the calculator ran out and had no way of recharging. Something had to be done, and it wasn’t going to be pretty.

When the battery was replaced, it was clear the back would never fit on again, but calculator casing is over-rated anyway. As is the orientation and presence of all its buttons.

Geometry is Broken

Robert — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 21:28:15 +0000

I was staring at this one for a good half-hour. I really enjoyed this question (when I finally completed it)

Why do the extra two red squares not seem to contribute to the area of the whole triangle?

I am not going to give away the solution, but I will give you this clue: think about similar triangles. Happy mathsing.

Dennis Ritchie

Robert — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 23:28:21 +0000

Steve Jobs did great things to the computing industry and was responsible for some of the nicest devices available. His death in October filled the media and respects were paid by many loyal Apple fans. Seven days later, however, came the death of another man, whose works were in my opinion far more important to the field of computing, and on whose ingenuity Apple’s success (along with that of so many other technology firms) relied. Dennis Ritchie invented the ‘C’ programming language: what is probably the most famous and most widely used language in existence. In fact there are almost no computer architectures in existence for which a C compiler has not been created. Not only was he responsible for the most successful programming language, he also co-invented the UNIX operating system (upon which Apple’s operating systems are incidentally based). Little was said in the media about the death of this man, but the result of his genius can be found in far more abundance than that of Steve Jobs’.

New Year’s Resolutions

Robert — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 11:48:32 +0000

I apologise profusely to all my reader(s) for the infrequency with which I have been making these posts. I shall endeavour to create a lot more blog posts in the following year, which should indeed be a very important year in my life. Next year is the year in which I turn 18, get my A-levels, start university and move away from home so it would be a great shame not to reflect upon my adventures in this blog.

Special Relativity

Robert — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 21:16:20 +0000

Charge Coupled Devices

Robert — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 16:54:07 +0000

Here is my physics presentation for you all to see…

Rubik’s Cube Maths

Robert — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 19:23:29 +0000

This is a failed attempt at a calculation of the number of Rubik’s Cube possibilities.