Recent Fascination with a Non-Orientable Mathematical Surface – Mobius Strips

I have realised the last time I published a post was way back in November and that maintaining a blog is, in fact, tremendously difficult during preliminary exams period, which very fortunately just ended. It is not guaranteed that the general schedule for updates will be followed due to final year school workload at the moment but, I’ll no doubt try my best.

I have always enjoyed mathematics in school, whether it was the logic behind exam problems or solving tricky little mathematical puzzles. I had first become aware of the field of topology research after the announcement of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics, where pretzels, doughnuts and mugs were used to demonstrate topological properties considering the different number of holes each contains. In a sense, if two objects have the same number of holes, they are topologically equivalent, because they can be deformed into the same object without tearing or glueing or taping.

Klein Bottle

Now, I do not claim that I understand topology at the slightest, yes, the subject is way beyond me currently, but it’s always nice to read around some of its core ideas.

Short Rant about Entropy and the Universe

One of the most important laws of Physics is perhaps one we have all heard once in a while – the second law of thermodynamics.

This law states that the entropy – in a closed system – in which we can infer as the Universe, will always increase.

A common misconception with the term entropy is that it is a measure of disorder. A “disordered” state does not necessarily mean that it has high entropy and vice versa. Entropy is rather the number of ways particles can be arranged. We can take tea and milk as an example, as many people do. Looking at the tea and milk system, at the instantaneous moment when you pour milk into tea, it is perceived to have low entropy, this is because the milk molecules are virtually sitting on top of the tea molecules. When you wait for a second or two until the milk starts to blend and dissolve into the tea, the system begins to increase in entropy, because there are so many more ways for the milk and tea molecules to arrange themselves in this sense, rather than being stacked on top of each other.

On Public Opinions of Space Exploration

While my lovely co-writer friend Jiangmin has been having a summer holiday filled with medicine, biological research and UKCAT revision (good luck!), she’s headed off this week to complete a Summer school course – just wanted to say, all the best Jiangmin!

I thought this week I might leave Physics aside for a little and talk about the importance of space flight and exploration, especially the Mars issue.

Many leading scientists believe that in order for humans to progress and maintain our survival we must think about progressing in terms of space exploration, whether that be missions like Juno and Cassini to aid research on planetary science, missions like Voyager – the furthest space craft from Earth to explore the outskirts of the solar system or actually sending humans to Mars which seems to either be the general public’s cup of tea, or not.

The Great Medic Insight Experience 2K17

Hey, Y’all! last week I attended the week long program, medic insight (which is as self-explanatory as it sounds) hence why I am late in posting and I have decided to share my experience for future aspiring medics. The program intends to allow fifth-year pupils in high school (i.e me) to experience the life of a typical medical student and much more. I have included their “About” page below so they can say for themselves.

The Glasgow one I attended was only in its 3rd year running, a baby when compared to its Edinburgh and Dundee counterparts. The Glasgow program runs twice, I attended week 1 as seen from my name card.

I felt one of the best things were how meticulously planned everything was, from tirelessly scouring through several hundred applications (from Glasgow alone!!!) in order to admit 50 lucky people for each week and giving each of them a personalised timetable. This was an impressive feat, considering it is run by Glasgow medics who have their own lectures and exams outside of organising Medic Insight.