A simple step

As we begin the Christmas season around this beautiful world, a period of reflection often occurs. Christmas (for most of the western world) is a time when we think about the year gone by, and about how far we have come along the road, and then we turn to the new year and begin to think about how far we are going to go and what we are going to do with our time next year. We all live life at different paces, sometimes we move quickly, at other times more slowly. We each choose how fast we want to move, making decisions that alter our progress and that sometimes take us in different directions. Sometimes those decisions help us gather momentum, at other times we lose it. That got me to thinking about physics...I was never really any good at school physics, I think the highest exam mark I ever got was around 40% despite the attempts of some very good teachers!, and the lowest was somewhere in the teens ....now a few years on from school, the querky reality is how much physics i...

I'm reading a book by Richard Dawkins - unweaving the rainbow and have just read the chapter on coincidence. Richard argues that all coincidences are really in our imagination or the result of a desire to want to believe in a force outside our control that brings things together. This reminded me of the fact that 'like attracts like' and that this is a scientific argument - molecules of water when close together will draw together to create a drop of water - basically that seems to me to be the reason why everything 'hangs together' rather than blending together. (Of course things do 'blend together' - putting two chemicals together often creates a new substance although some things just do not go together, they cannot 'blend'). Coincidence can be scientifically proven - the book talks about the fact that in Britain, there are likely to be 38,000 people (out of the 55million odd) with the same three initials, so finding a watch with your initials on ...