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Uncertainty

Uncertainty: an article published in Frontiers 03 (Atlantic Books, 2003).
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HOW LITTLE WE KNOW ABOUT THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE

Philip Ball. An article published in Frontiers 03 (Atlantic Books, 2003)

    Heisenberg: Are we doomed to disagree then on what happened between us at Copenhagen? Bohr: But that is the whole point, Werner. You yourself have shown that uncertainty is a fundamental part of nature – that there is always imprecision in our knowledge of things.

The disturbing thing is not that these lines don’t appear anywhere in Michael Frayn’s play Copenhagen (I made them up), but that if they had, few people would have batted an eyelid. For isn’t that what Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle tells us: that uncertainty lies at the heart of everything?

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Chemistry in soft focus

Chemistry in soft focus: an article published in Chemistry in Britain 38(9), 32 (2002).
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CHEMISTRY IN SOFT FOCUS

An article published in Chemistry in Britain 38(9), p.32 (2002)

Chemistry seems to have more than its fair share of romance. Who can resist the story of Kekulé’s sleep-drenched vision of carbon chains on the last bus to Clapham before “the cry of the conductor· awakened me from my dreaming”? Or Louis Pasteur picking apart tiny crystals of tartaric acid with tweezers in hand before verifying his intuition of chirality, shrieking “Eureka!” and running out of the lab to embrace a bewildered Dr Bertrand in the corridor?

These stories, repeated endlessly and uncritically, have entered the mythology of chemistry. It is only in recent years that a more careful dissection of the discipline’s history has revealed how flimsy is the evidence to support many of them. Some of chemistry’s popular tales are probably outright fabrication, the product of wishful thinking, over-embellished recollection, wilful self-aggrandisement or a skewed historical agenda. …

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Beyond words

Beyond words – science and visual theatre: an article published in Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 27, 169 (2002).
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BEYOND WORDS : SCIENCE AND VISUAL THEATRE

Published in Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 27, 169 (2002)
Philip Ball, Nature, 4-6 Crinan St., London, N1 9XW, UK

Science is becoming increasingly visible in the theatre, where it is often regarded as a fertile source of ideas and metaphors. I argue that we should not overlook the potential of science as an abundant well of visual imagery for the theatre. Scientific research and discovery can provide new physical languages for theatrical expression, and new ways of looking at and depicting the world. Scientists at the nexus of experiment and discovery have often seen things never before observed by human eyes; such visions, recreated or re-imagined for a theatre audience, can stimulate the kind of wonderment that is central to the theatrical experience. …

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Newton’s curse: New Scientist

“Newton’s curse”, New Scientist, 8 April 2006, p.4. (The printed version contains errors and general ugliness introduced in editing: click here for a PDF of the corrected version.)

Alchemy and colour

Alchemy and colour: an article for the UCL chemistry departmental bulletin.
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ALCHEMY IN THE COLOURS OF THE RENAISSANCE
Philip Ball. An article written for the UCL chemistry department, 2002

If you were a painter during the Renaissance, you were probably something of an alchemist too. That’s not to say that you spent your time trying to make gold; but you would have been familiar with the chemical manipulation of matter. You had to be-for there were no art shops, no Winsor and Newton, in those days: you had to make your own paints.

To some of those artists, alchemy was just a chemical technology: a convenient manufacturing process for making colours and other useful substances, such as turpentine and varnishes. Cennino Cennini, a Florentine craftsman, writing around 1390, explains that the brilliant red pigment called vermilion ‘is made by alchemy, prepared in a retort’-but he doesn’t bother to tell his readers how to do this, for ‘it would be too tedious’. Instead, he says, you can buy it from the apothecaries; but don’t take it ready-ground, because the swindlers will mix it with brick dust. …

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2011 and All That

A talk from 2012 on why 2011 should make us take the physics of society seriously.
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