Casual Physics Enjoyer

I try to do science in my house — also on Substack.

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2026 53
  • Suggested Experiment Equipment
  • Johnson noise rig — full chat transcript
  • Equilibrium points in Dyson's Toy Cell Model
  • Better Temperature Control Of Algae?
  • Measuring Milk Globule Sizes
  • What's the point of doing stuff
  • In memoriam
  • How To Read Something
  • Questions On Early Cell Membranes
  • The Questions I Always Think About
  • Preparing Algae for Experiments at Home
  • LEAN For Checking my Math
  • Steady States in Dyson's Theory of the Cell
  • What is the most intense way to learn something?
  • Improved Tracking Of Brownian Milk Globules
  • The World Needs Replicators
  • On a Tube Of Hot Gas
  • I Observed Some Brownian Motion At Home
  • Join The Independent Science Society!
  • How Would An Intelligent System Do Physics?
  • The Particle Comes Alive
  • Being Political in the Right Way
  • Do Not Plan
  • Freeman Dyson’s Model of a Cell
  • How to Write Better
  • Excerpts
  • Why Read Faraday's Diary?
  • A Thermodynamics For Biology
  • It’s OK To Be Scared
  • Fluid dynamics for Toddlers
  • Making Rayleigh-Bénard Convection Cells
  • An Agentic Home Bioreactor
  • Kew Gardens, Turbulence, Statistical Mechanics, Bioreactors and Strength Training
  • How To Get Cheaper Lab Equipment
  • Daily Readings
  • Posting More of My Thoughts
  • The Best Town I've Been To.
  • So My Friend Made Me A Bioreactor...
  • How To Think About Dynamic Systems
  • The Triumph Of The Embryo
  • AI Agents to Organise My Secret Society's Dinners
  • From Reversibility to Irreversibility
  • How I Fixed my Headaches
  • Biology as Clockwork
  • Being Maximally Useful Whilst Commuting
  • Trying to make an Automated Ecologist
  • Will Future Generations Think We're Gross?
  • PPE Stockpile Degradation
  • Safety And Danger
  • So I got an EEG...
  • Bio-theory Lab Notes!
  • How Can I Make Useful Knowledge?
  • 20 References In Complexity Theory and Biology
2025 80
  • Using Linear Algebra To Predict A Non-Linear Pendulum
  • Testing a cheaper laminar flow hood.
  • How To Find Time To Do Science
  • The Man I Want To Meet The Most
  • When Is A Complex System Stable?
  • I Made A Quieter Air Purifier.
  • What's A Good Theory Of Biology?
  • My UV Experiment Worked!
  • Write Clearly
  • The Effect of UV Light On Yeast
  • Sneeze for the Camera Baby!
  • Non Equilibrium Statistical Mechanics and Biology
  • Why Independent Science Now?
  • 'How Life Works' by Philip Ball
  • Making an Automated UV Sterilisation Pump
  • I Managed To Grow Countable Yeast Colonies
  • Culturing Yeast For Independent Science Experiments
  • Do You Actually Hate It?
  • Evidence That Shrouds Increase CR Box Performance
  • A War in The Lake District
  • Sealing my House Against Pathogens
  • Bad Productivity Frameworks
  • Cycling the West Country
  • Measuring my DIY Air Purifier
  • The Ideas Factory?
  • Dear Friends and Readers, Please Help
  • Did I Just Make Quantum Dots?
  • Physics Departments At Risk Of Shutting Down
  • Trying to make a Cheaper Air Purifier
  • You Like Too Many Things. Now What?
  • A Cheaper Way to Test Ventilation Rates?
  • Frying Eggs and Air Quality Tests
  • I want to do experiments but its not cheap
  • Noise Cancelling A Fan
  • Dirt Cheap Holidays
  • Try to Prove Math With Computers
  • You Need to Read Thomas Kuhn.
  • Just get a Partial Fix and Move On.
  • Computing Properties of Molecules.
  • For Here Too, Gods Dwell
  • Tolerating Confusion
  • How To Make More Friends
  • We Should Formalise Physics
  • Do Anything in 20 Minutes
  • Models for Cleaning Air
  • If It's Not Obvious, It Probably Isn't
  • How to Easily Keep Something Alive
  • A Big Board of Problems
  • Teaching Cambridge-Level Math At Scale (Without Charging $150k)
  • What I Learned from 500 Independent Scientists
  • Try these Biosecurity Projects in your free time!
  • DIY Positive Pressure Build Log
  • What is the Most Effective Day?
  • Can I use Air Pressure to Protect my House?
  • Why Your Technical Expertise Might Not Be Your Greatest Asset
  • Love isn't Physics, but popular advice acts like it is
  • What I use for Notes (and Publishing)
  • Buyin' and Tryin' an Elastomeric Respirator
  • MacOS ssh File System (SSHFS)
  • It's hard to know if I suck at writing
  • How to Start Modelling Airflow Ventilation
  • Calculations for Practical Heuristics in Far UVC Use
  • How do I achieve what I want?
  • Problems Trying to Model Far UVC in a Room
  • Thought Blobs On Biosecurity Topics
  • Let's Not Rawdog the Next Plague
  • Contents
  • A Two-Tier Model of Optimal Career Design
  • The Pain of Finding the Truth
  • Three Skills of Virtue
  • When To Trust Someone
  • Don't Agree To Things Too Easily
  • What do we do now?
  • The Professor and the Plumber
  • London and the Country
  • Chicken Curry, Piece by Piece
  • How my Life Changes
  • Slow Down.
  • Do I want to be Excellent?
  • You're a Slow Thinker. Now what?
2024 14
  • Why Casual Conversation is So Hard
  • Don't Chase It
  • Compulsion as a Tool
  • On Good Writing
  • Scientists will become Data Harvesters
  • Tediousness is Good.
  • Conquering the Molecules
  • When The Scientific Method Fails
  • Calibrating Myself through Science Memoirs
  • Selecting Good Problems as a Part-Time Physics Researcher
  • Doing Research Part-Time is Great
  • Problems come from Dumb Questions
  • Do Physics, But Learn History
  • A Quantum Mechanics Problem on a Particle in a Line under an Electric Field.
2023 6
  • Preliminary Thoughts on Solar Cell Efficiency
  • Quantifying Wants, For Better Outcomes
  • Experiences with the Physics and Economics of Solar Cells in Malaysia
  • Solar Energy from the Sahara.
  • Turning my Passion into a Job was a Bad Idea
  • A Draft of some Start-up Ideas
2022 27
  • Changing our Frame to Make Things Easier
  • Thoughts on Gravitational Fields on Shells
  • Physics Diaries #2
  • Cool Physics Stuff I Attempted today
  • A List of Problems in Many Electron Systems
  • Finding The Ground States of Quantum Systems
  • Heisenberg Spin Chains
  • The Energy of an Electron Hopping Model
  • How do Loops change Physics?
  • An Example of a "Partially Fair" Model
  • More Thoughts on Space Solar Energy
  • A TL-DR for Basic Group Theory
  • Thoughts on Words and their Meaning
  • Redshift from Massive Objects
  • Measuring Disorder and Complexity
  • Noether’s Theorem and the Principle of Least Action
  • What is the Dollar Cost of Malaysia’s Racial Discrimination?
  • The Viability of Space Solar Energy
  • Will AI-enabled automation constitute more than half of the Gross World Product by 2100?
  • The Hopf-Fibration and a Four-Dimensional Sphere
  • Electrodynamics Puzzles
  • Small Sample Bias and Data Ethics
  • What is our natural Rate of Extinction?
  • Existential Risk and the Offence-Defence Balance.
  • Slippage in Automated Market Makers
  • Density Functional Theory
  • Time Crystals, Part II
2021 18
  • Time Crystals
  • Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange
  • Computing a Feynman Diagram for the Magnetic g-Factor
  • Phase Transitions in the Checkerboard State
  • Explaining Quantum Degeneracy
  • Hydrogen and its Mysterious Energies
  • The Economics of Intergalactic Trade — Part I
  • The Integer Quantum Hall Effect
  • Geometry as the Theatre of Physics
  • Quantifying our Confidence in Statistical Models — The Confidence Interval
  • Why do we have to combine Einstein's Relativity with Quantum Mechanics?
  • How do Physicists understand the different Phases of Matter?
  • Using Natural Language Processing to visualise Uncertainty in News Content
  • The wonderful Math that powers Disney’s Animation
  • Finding Geometrical Beauty in Simple Physics
  • Taming Infinities — Why is it possible to do Physics at all?
  • Cheating Nash’s Game Theory, with Quantum Mechanics
  • The baffling Differences between Classical and Quantum Mechanics

Contents

7 April 2025

My writing is broadly split into the following themes. Here are some of my more popular posts sorted in order

Thinking Style

  • You’re a Slow Thinker. Now What?

  • The Pain of Finding the Truth

Meta-Career and Life Design

  • A Two-Tier Model of Optimal Career Design

  • Doing Research Part-Time is Great

  • How my Life Changes

  • Slow Down

  • Do I Want to be Excellent?

  • What do we do now?

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