Many years ago, I had to write an essay for an examination in English language. I wanted to surprise my teacher, a very gentle Briton from somewhere around Manchester, so I put together a study halfway between science and literature,
Read moreMany years ago, I had to write an essay for an examination in English language. I wanted to surprise my teacher, a very gentle Briton from somewhere around Manchester, so I put together a study halfway between science and literature,
Read moreA few nights ago I was watching a funny movie, Barbershop, about a guy trying to keep open his father’s shop in Chicago while under pressure by a gangster that wants to turn the shop into a strip club. I found this old
Read moreI was digging into old e-mails, and stumbled on a saved draft about black phosphorus, dating from several years ago. After the 2010 Nobel prize to graphene, the attention around two-dimensional materials, either single-layered, multi-layered, or grown on a bulk support,
Read moreLeaning heavily on Alain Aspect’s and other similar experiments on entangled particle pairs, one often associates the notion of entanglement with an effect that is today clearly demonstrated at the smallest scale, but has little, if any, observable effects at
Read moreToday is New Year’s Day, according to the old Julian calendar. After celebrating yesterday night, with a magnificent all-Russian menu (including shuba, two variants of Olivier, lots of kilka and sprats, and French champagne, and rewatching again the classic 1975 movie Ironyia Sudby), it is
Read moreWith the holiday times approaching (have you finished your gift-buying chores yet?) one of the concerns that regularly happen to trouble the festive atmosphere is, “how much extra weight am I going to put on this time, after January 1?”.
Read moreCryptography is today one of the most popular applications of computer science, and we usually think of it as a modern way to hide a transaction behind a complex, machine-generated code. Cryptograms however have been used since the antiquity, to exchange e.g.
Read moreA few days ago, I pulled out of the bookshelf a book. I sometimes like to randomly go back to old readings, to dig up a citation or a particular image that I remember, or maybe just to check if
Read moreDespite its pretty vulgar use as the place where food for the family is prepared, kitchen as you know is a very nice place to do physics experiments. In this periodic letter, I already described the physics of coffee making, the phase
Read moreLast week it was the “Nobels’ week”. As every first week in October since 123 years, three to nine startled scientists pick up the phone and listen to a voice announcing they have been awarded a Nobel prize in chemistry,
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