Dr. Christopher Bird

Remembrance Day

November 11, 2019

Remembrance Day

Let us each take a moment out of our busy schedules to remember all of those who sacrificed to protect our freedoms. Lest we forget...

Happy Halloween!

October 31, 2019

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

Once again we are at the biggest day of the year for the physics community - the announcement of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics. And this year's recipients are well deserving of the award.

One of the details that I found particularly intriguing was that the award went to three individuals in two very different aspects of physics. Usually the Nobel committee selects a scientific achievement, and then determines which scientists contributed most to that research. But it would seem that this yea...
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Back To School

September 9, 2019

Some loyal readers will recognize this entry as a repeat from the last five years. Each year it gets a good response, and kudos from my readers, and so as before I must appease my loyal followers...

To all the students starting University, enjoy this time of your life. Long ago when I started, a prof told me that this is the start of your real education. Now you get to choose your own courses and your own field of study. It is entirely up to you to decide what to do with this chance.

I know fro...

Free Software

September 8, 2019

With the arrival of September, students around the world will be returning to classes this week. And for those who are starting out at college or university, one of the most important considerations is how to live on a budget. These are the years when one has little or no income, but must bear the expenses of living independently for the first time. While giving advice on living on a budget is far too expansive to cover in this blog, I can tackle one small aspect of student life by providing ...
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Life On The Moon!

August 10, 2019

It is official - there is life on the moon!

Admittedly, we were the ones who put it there so maybe it isn't such a good thing after all.

Last April a team from Israel sent an unmanned spacecraft known as Beresheet to the Moon. They were able to take some photographs as the probe approached the lunar surface, but then lost contact with it shortly afterwards. With no means of controlling the spacecraft it would have crashed violently into the lunar surface and broken apart.

This is not exactly a n...
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Posted In : Astronomy

The PET/CT Machine

July 23, 2019

Sometimes in life strange coincidences happen. For example, a few weeks ago I wrote an article on the science behind computed tomography scanners that are ubiquitous in modern hospitals. Then today there is an article in the local newspaper reporting that the hospital I was at in April has just purchased and installed a PET/CT medical imaging device. And so rather than accept this as a random coincidence, I will take it as a sign that my readers would like to know more about this imaging meth...
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Posted In : Medical

Computed Tomography Reconstruction

June 26, 2019

In yesterday's article I demonstrated an intuitive explanation of the Fourier transform, which is used in nearly every branch of physics and mathematics. It allows an image to be stored in terms of its properties, such as average brightness and weighting of different regions of the image, and therefore is more useful for data analysis than a bitmapped image would be.

Today I will demonstrate one of the many applications of the Fourier transform. As promised, today I will be demonstrating how a...
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Posted In : Medical

Fourier Transforms

June 25, 2019

I have spent the last few weeks pondering what I should write about for my first article back. Should I go into something exotic in astrophysics such as magnetic monopoles or topological defects? Should I go into complicated mathematical research and paradoxes? Should I go into the bizarre world of quantum mechanics and its foundations? Nothing seemed quite right.

So I decided to write about Fourier transforms. That's right, after thinking about some of the strangest concepts in physics and ma...
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Posted In : Mathematics

News & Updates

April 30, 2019

Today's article is going to be very different from my usual writing, in that it does not contain scientific or mathematics news, but rather news of a more personal nature. Ordinarily I would keep my private life private, but enough of my loyal readers have been asking about my recent absence that I feel it is worth giving a few updates.

For those who have not heard, on April 13th I was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery. I had been having abdominal pains for a few days before, but early ...
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Posted In : Administrative