Google Boldly Goes...

Forgive me for the dreadful title?

It's the 46th anniversary of the original Star Trek series! The first regular episode was 'The Man Trap' shown on Thursday September 8th 1966 at 8:30 - so guess what I'll be watching this evening... well probably the Paralympics actually, but maybe Star Trek in tiny bursts  during the advert breaks.

Google have celebrated with a commemorative Doodle:

Screenshot from Google

It incorporates lots of nods to iconic scenes to keep fans happy, and it's fun. Here's an interview with the guy who designed it: http://www.startrek.com/article/celebrating-46-years-with-a-google-doodle.

This video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVpCUZ2c4qc shows all of the little animations - it's much more fun to try them out for yourself though! If it's not the 8th anymore then you can find it here http://www.google.com/doodles/finder/2012/All%20doodles.

*spoilers alert*

Hats off to Google: they've thought of everything! We are treated to tribbles falling out of an overhead locker, the Gorn fight, the bridge console will cycle through sound effects including the communicator chirrup, they've even reproduced the soft-focus-close-up-shots-of-attractive-female-characters thing for if you click on Lieutenant Uhura at the beginning! (admittedly the latter was a completely unnecessary quirk in filming the series, but since it was there, it's here).

Poor redshirt 'e' gets hit by Kirk's stick bouncing off the Gorn and splattered by the makeshift cannon, but he does manage to survive the 'episode', so he can't complain.

I only wish that 'Google' was seven letters so that there could have been a Scotty letter...

Physics is Cute

When I say I take physics A level, people's reactions tend to range from 'why?' to 'you poor thing!'. They probably assume physics = hard maths. Maths is often involved (and sometimes makes me want to disembowel myself with a spoon), but the physics department also get away with the most ridiculously fun stuff by claiming it's educational.

Exhibit A: Visits to theme parks. It was just the once, but still. We had a day out of school so that we could ride on roller-coasters and 'experience' the gravitational energy changing to kinetic energy for our coursework. The chemistry equivalent is dripping things into test tubes under exam conditions. No contest.

Exhibit B: The Particle Zoo.

Aww

Ninja!

Our physics department owns most of a full set of these plushies. They do have explanatory tags and are used as a teaching tool - but mainly they're incredibly awesome and cute. And the strange quarks have three eyes and the charm quarks have roses!

So much!

In all seriousness, the actual physics is pretty awesome too, especially particle physics and astrophysics: the mindbogglingly small and the mindbogglingly big. I defy anyone to look at images of nebulae and tell me they're not beautiful. The sad thing is that although I have seen the Enterprise mentioned in an old textbook, that was to say that using antimatter-matter annihilations to power the ship probably wouldn't work...