Science
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Experience the Impressive Naturalis Museum in Leiden
Naturalis in Leiden is the Dutch national research institute for biodiversity. Their national history museum has a very large collection of more than 40 million objects. During our previous visit a few years ago most of the museum was closed for renovation and we could only see their T-Rex skeleton Trix. This was excavated in…
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Exploring the Boerhaave Museum: A Dive into Dutch Scientific History
During our recent trip to Leiden we decided to visit the Boerhaave museum again. This is a very famous Dutch history of science museum covering 5 centuries of scientific discoveries in The Netherlands. You can view famous scientific equipment like early telescopes and microscopes used by for example Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. Quite a lot of…
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Exploring Turtle Graphics: A Random Walk in Python
As part of the 100 Days of Code with Python training we had to plot a random walk using Turtle Graphics. There was a link to this wikipedia page explaining the mathematics and applications of random walks in various fields. I didn’t read all the mathematical details for various dimensions, only the 1d case and…
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From 100 Days of Code to Ideas for Geometry Projects with Turtle
After having finished the beginner section of 100 Days of Code Python Bootcamp on Udemy I decided to push on and to explore the remaining 85 days of coding as well. A vacation intervened with this but now I managed to continue the lessons and finished days 16-18 which are about Object Oriented Programming. Day…
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HP-28S Advanced Scientific Calculator
Very long ago, when I was in high school I got my first hp calculator from my dad: a HP-15C. He gave it to me because I had issues with brackets on a standard calculator and with RPN you don’t need brackets. I believe this was in third grade. When things got a bit more…
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Gravity’s Fatal Attraction. Black Holes in the Universe, Mitchell Begelman and Martin Rees (ISBN 978-1-108-81905-3, Cambridge University Press)
I just finished reading this book. I found a reference to it in another book I read recently. It is a really peculiar book, I have not read anything like it before. As the title suggests it deals with gravitation and how its unique characteristics lead to black holes. It has no equations in it…
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The Sleepwalkers, Arthur Koestler (ISBN 978-0-141-39453-4, Penguin Classics)
I read about this book in another one about the effort to send people to Mars. I wrote a short post about that book earlier. This book is a mix of history a of science and an analysis of the scientific method. From the latter perspective it presents an alternative to the well known Structure…
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Hanta Virus Cases Linked to Hondius Cruise Ship
Ever since a couple of people that travelled on the cruise ship Hondius died from a Hanta virus the spread of the infection has been in the daily news. The WHO website reports 11 cases of which 8 are confirmed hanta virus infections and 3 are probable. All are linked to the Hondius cruise ship…
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Online Calculators
I have owned many physical calculators over the years and still have around 7 of them at home. I mostly use the HP15C Limited Edition or the HP50G. Whenever I need a calculator and I don’t have one I grab my phone but when I am at home at my desk I will always choose…
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The Little Book of the Big Bang: A Cosmic Primer, Craig J. Hogan (ISBN 9780387983851; Springer)
The title of the book describes the content quite well. In roughly 170 pages the author covers the history of our universe from the Big Bang until today. One reviewer on the back cover goes so far as to claim that Hogan has condensed the story into a pleasurable evening. Although the pages are not…
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