Did you know that our databases don’t just contain scholarly musings on obscure issues, some of them are intensely practical, like the engineering and materials information database, Knovel, which you can use to build practical things, like bicycles, race cars, bridges, autoclaves… okay, let’s stick with bikes for now.

Anyone who has ever ventured into the realms of science, religion, mysticism or philosophy will have encountered their fair share of paradoxes: apparent contradictions that highlight where our understanding is insufficient to grasp a deeper truth. That’s the case here, …

Fun with physics: the spinning disc paradox Read more »

I’ve plumbed the depths of Knovel before now but having just chatted with the lovely lady from Elsevier who teaches people like your lecturers about the latest developments in our academic information resources, I wanted to pass on news of these latest exciting new tools and features that have been added recently.

BASIC (Beginners’ All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) remains the simplest programming language, first used at Dartmoor College, New England in 1963, to teach Humanities students and other non-mathematicians to code, and specifically to build a time-sharing programme for mainframe time-sharing. This was back in the day when powerful computers filled a room, and people queued up for time to use it for advanced computational calculations – much as they continue to do today for modern supercomputers, telescopes, and other expensive and rare pieces of shared technology. This interview with one of the lecturers explains where BASIC came from and how the first coding class came about.

Interested in getting up to speed with engineering research?  Try the Engineering Academic Challenge: an immersive interdisciplinary problem-set based competition built around 5 trans-disciplinary themes including the future of energy, manufacture and medicine.  The first problem-set will go live in two weeks …

Lay the foundations for your career in Engineering Read more »

The making of Avatar by Jody Duncan & Lisa Fitzpatrick This week’s Book of the Week is about one of the most famous films of the past few years.  In 1995, James Cameron began working on a story that would, …

Creative Arts Book of the Week 07/12/15 Read more »