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Newton’s Laws in Translation

Posted in History, Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on November 13, 2019 by telescoper

I’m about to do some lectures about Newton’s Laws of Motion to my first-year Mathematical Physics class so I thought I’d put up a quick post about how these laws have been expressed through the years. The original versions in the Principia (frontispiece above, first published in 1687) are of course in Latin. I did five years of Latin at school, but found most of the Principia impenetrable when I tried to read it in the original

 

The laws of motion are however fairly clear, perhaps because they are familiar in English:

Lex I: Corpus omne perseverare in statu suo quiescendi vel movendi uniformiter in directum, nisi quatenus illud a viribus impressis cogitur statum suum mutare.

Lex II: Mutationem motus proportionalem esse vi motrici impressæ, & fieri secundum lineam rectam qua vis illa imprimitur.

Lex III: Actioni contrariam semper & æqualem esse reactionem: sive corporum duorum actiones in se mutuo semper esse æqualeset in partes contrarias dirigi.

As I am teaching in a room in the old college here in Maynooth (which was founded in 1795), I looked for a contemporary English translation. This is from 1792:

Law I: Every body perseveres in a state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by forces impressed.

Law II: The alteration of motion is ever proportional to the motive force impressed; and is made in the direction of the right line in which that force is impressed.

Law III: To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction: or the mutual action of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts.

And finally here’s the modern version I was taught at School:

First Law: Every body continues in a state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line unless it is acted upon by an external (unbalanced) force.

Second Law: The rate of change of momentum of a body is proportional to the impressed force, and is in the direction in which this force acts.

Third Law: To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction,

an alternative form of the Third Law being:

Third Law: If Body A exerts a force on Body B then Body B exerts a force on Body A which is equal in magnitude and opposite in direction.

Going back to the 1792 English translation, the exposition of the second law continues:

If a force generates a motion, a double force will generate double the motion, a triple force triple the motion, whether that force be impressed altogether and at once, or gradually and successively. And this motion (being always directed the same way with the generating force), if the body moved before, is added to or subtracted from the former motion, according as they directly conspire with or are directly contrary to each other; or obliquely joined, when they are oblique, so as to produce a new motion compounded from the determination of both.

If only Newton had known vector notation!

 

 

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Cosmology Job Opportunity at Maynooth!

Posted in Maynooth with tags , on November 11, 2019 by telescoper

With everything else going on I completely forgot to mention on here that there is a job opportunity for a senior research position in cosmology here in the Department of Theoretical Physics here in Maynooth that may
lead to a permanent position subject to satisfactory performance. The position was advertised some time ago through the usual channels (including jobs.ac.uk and the Times Higher job site) as well as on the Maynooth University jobs site.

The details can be found here, at which site you can also apply.

You will have to hurry, though, as the deadline is Wednesday 13th November 2020 – about 48 hours from now!

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Back to Ireland

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth on November 9, 2019 by telescoper

I’m back in a very cold and windy Maynooth after a trip to Newcastle (via London) for my Mam’s funeral. It went as well as could have been expected, though it was a difficult occasion for all concerned. It was nice to see such a good turnout, though, including several members of my family I haven’t seen for many years. The service was both simple and dignified (and entirely secular).

I’ve got a lot of things to catch up on after the few days I spent away so I don’t have time for a long post today. I did, however, want to put up a short message to express my gratitude to everyone who has contacted me privately to offer condolences and good wishes. All your messages mean a lot, so thank you all. That also goes for all the friends I met at the RAS Club on Friday evening, all of whom were very supportive.

Now, I have three examination papers and two problem sets to write by Monday, five lectures to prepare for next week, and a lengthy review article about the Hubble constant to finish by Friday so I’d best get on with it. Moping about isn’t going to help.

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5/12 Term Break

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth on October 25, 2019 by telescoper

Today marks the end of the fifth week of teaching at Maynooth University and next week is the October mid-term break, starting with a bank holiday on Monday 28th October: the last Monday of October (Lá Saoire i mí Dheireadh Fómhair), or the Halloween Holiday (Lá Saoire Oíche Shamhna), is a national holiday in Ireland.

The mid-term break, optimistically known as ‘Study Week’, is often called ‘Half Term’ but since we have twelve-week teaching terms and we’ve only done five weeks at this point, I’ve used the more accurate description in the title of this post.

I’ll be back in Maynooth next week but I’m taking a few days off until then. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible, but there will now follow a short intermission.

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On Zero-Hours Contracts

Posted in Maynooth, Politics with tags , , , , on October 20, 2019 by telescoper

In a week dominated by stupid things being said by stupid British politicians, one of the stupidest of all was the claim by Labour MP Caroline Flint that the European Union is to blame for the rise of zero-hours contracts. Caroline Flint is a Brexit supporter, of course, so she will not be interested in facts, but it is a fact that the European Union recently adopted a directive that protects workers’ rights and, in most cases, rules out zero-hours contracts. It’s up to the national governments to implement EU directives, something that the United Kingdom has yet to do and obviously will not do if and when Brexit happens and all employment protections go on the bonfire. As a Labour MP you would think Caroline Flint would care about this, but apparently not. She’s content to recite lies she hopes will curry favour with her leave-voting constituents and perpetuate her own political career at their expense.

Meanwhile, here in Ireland, the Oireachtas recently passed legislation making zero-hours contracts unlawful in Ireland `in most circumstances’. There’s a nice summary of the effects of the new law here.

I probably don’t need to spell it out but I rather think that the existence of this law and Ireland’s membership of the European Union comprehensively refutes Caroline Flint’s claim. Zero-hours are on the rise in the UK because of it’s own Government, not because of the European Union. I can think of dozens of other things that the EU gets the blame for that are actually the fault of the idiots in Westminster. Perhaps after Brexit British politicians will no longer be able to use the EU as a scapegoat for things they themselves mess up, though something makes me think they will continue to try and that the gullible public may actually believe them.

Anyway, the legal changes around zero-hours contracts in Ireland have had a significant impact in higher education, where many people – often (but not always) graduate students – are employed on casual part-time arrangements to run small group teaching sessions (i.e tutorials), demonstrate in laboratories, mark coursework and so on. The contracts on which such people have been employed have hitherto often been of the zero-hours type that is now unlawful.

As a response to this change in the law, here in Maynooth we have changed the contracts we issue to casual teaching staff, introducing clearer terms and conditions of employment as well as giving clearer indications of hours to be worked. In particular there is now a new category of employment designed for graduate students who are doing teaching, with terms and conditions that reflect their special status. All this required quite an effort at the start of teaching term this year to adapt to the new arrangements in time for the first teaching sessions. I only started as Head of Department on 1st September, and teaching started on 23rd, so this all caused quite a few headaches for me personally as I tried to get to grips with the new system. Fortunately, in the end, the transition actually went relatively smoothly and we have now settled into a steady state.

Of course it wasn’t the existence of graduate student teachers that precipitated the change in the law in Ireland. There are far worse offenders than universities in the use of exploitative employment contracts. Nevertheless but I am glad that the change has happened. Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, according to UCU figures, around 46% of universities use staff on zero-hours contracts to deliver teaching.

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After the Storm..

Posted in Maynooth with tags , , on October 4, 2019 by telescoper

Storm Lorenzo passed over Maynooth during the night bringing with it a lot of rain but at least the winds were not too fierce. At least I assume they were not too fierce because I slept through the whole thing. I tend to sleep well with a bottle of fine wine inside me.

This morning as I walked into work it was still raining but other than that fairly peaceful. Maynooth University Library Cat was on post despite the rain although he was looking a bit bedraggled and his food dishes were filled with water. He must have had a rough night, as I’m not sure his box provided must protection. Unfortunately this was one morning when I didn’t have any treats for him in my pocket so I hope some other nice person gives him something to eat!

 

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The Calm Before Lorenzo

Posted in Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on October 3, 2019 by telescoper

It was calm and rather mild this morning as I walked into work, although the news on the radio this morning was filled with news about the rapidly approaching Storm Lorenzo. Lorenzo is a huge storm and was only downgraded from hurricane to tropical storm when it was about 500km from the Irish coast so it could be even more serious than Storm Ophelia, which caused chaos a couple of years ago.

This is how the storm looked in the early hours of this morning:

And this is the projection for later today. The prevailing wind right now is westerly, but this will veer to south-westerly as the storm moves along its (roughly) north-easterly path:

Here is an infra-red image taken this morning showing the outer belts of cloud already over Ireland.

Quite a few events have been called off in anticipation of the arrival of Storm Lorenzo this evening, with heavy rain and gale force winds forecast across the country. There are signs, however, that the low pressure region at the heart of the storm is filling more rapidly than expected, so it might not be as severe as feared, although there remains a significant risk of localized flooding and wind damage, especially in the West. I plan to sit it out at home this evening with a glass or two of wine for company…

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Scholastica Webinar – The Open Journal of Astrophysics Project

Posted in Maynooth, Open Access with tags , , on October 2, 2019 by telescoper

As you may know, together with Fiona Morley of Maynooth University Library, last week I contributed to this `webinar’:

If you missed the event itself then you can follow the link here to access a full recording of the webinar. You can also find a quick summary of the goings-on here.

And if all this weren’t exciting enough, here are the slides I used for my bit.

 

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End of Summer Rains

Posted in Cricket, Maynooth with tags , , , on September 26, 2019 by telescoper

The rain is pouring down here in Maynooth, but this isn’t the only place to have had inclement weather today:

The picture above shows the scene this morning at Chester-le-Street in County Durham where the County Championship Division 2 match between Durham and Glamorgan was taking place. Or rather, wasn’t taking place. The game was abandoned this morning owing to a the cumulative effect of heavy rain over the last few days that allowed only 86 overs to be bowled in total over the four days.

This match being declared a draw, Glamorgan finish the season in 4th place on 167 points, missing out on promotion to Division 1 but having performed much better than last season. They were top of the table early on, but the loss of the excellent Marnus Labuschagne to Ashes duty for Australia proved a big blow and they fell back in the second half of the season. Anyway, at least they’ll probably win a few games next season, while they would undoubtedly struggle in Division 1. Lancashire finish top of the Division 2 table by a country mile, while Northants and Gloucester also go up.

I always thing of the last day of the County Championship as the end of summer. This year most of the final round of games has been hit by the weather so it’s a rather damp ending. This is also the first year in a while in which I haven’t seen any live cricket. Still, there’s always next year.

That’s basically all I have time to write about today as I’ve been running around all day – including popping into the library to give the webinar I mentioned yesterday. Moreover, at 6pm local time all the power in the building is going off and we’re to be turfed out while some repair work is done. I’ll shortly have to go round checking all the computers are switched off.

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The Autumnal Equinox 2019

Posted in Maynooth with tags , , on September 23, 2019 by telescoper

The Autumnal Equinox (in the Northern hemisphere) took place today (Monday 23rd September 2019) at 8.50am in Ireland.

People sometimes ask me how one can define the `equinox’ so precisely when surely it just refers to a day on which day and night are of equal length, implying that it’s a day not a specific time? The answer is that the equinox is defined by a specific event, the event in question being when the plane defined by Earth’s equator passes through the centre of the Sun’s disk (or, if you prefer, when the centre of the Sun passes through the plane defined by Earth’s equator). Day and night are not necessarily exactly equal on the equinox, but they’re the closest they get. From now on days in the Northern hemisphere will be shorter than nights and they’ll get shorter until the Winter Solstice.

For many people the autumnal equinox is taken to be the end of summer, though there is a saying around these parts that `Summer is Summer to Michaelmas Day’ (which does not happen until September 29th). Nevertheless it is the first day of teaching term and the start of the last round of this years matches in English cricket’s County Championship. The end of the cricket season is the end of summer as far as I’m concerned, though I haven’t seen any matches in person this year.

Over the past week or two the new students have been going through various induction and orientation processes, but their first encounter with actual teaching will be tomorrow. I will be greeting our 94 new first-year Mathematical Physics students at 11am on their first day. I hope I don’t put too many off.  Then I start the fourth-years off on  Astrology and Cosmetics Astrophysics and Cosmology. That is assuming that I take the right notes to the right lectures.

Anyway, I think that’s enough rambling for now. I’ve got to finish getting my notes together for the next few days. Let me end by wishing the new and returning students at Maynooth  all the best for the new academic year. That goes for all students everywhere too! Work hard, and enjoy your studies, but don’t forget to enjoy life on the way!

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