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Salah Kouhen

Salah Kouhen

A PhD student at Oxford. Interested in turbulence, physics generally and a mix of many other things.

And yet it spins...

And yet it spins...

Galileo Galilei was the first person to observe the moons of Jupiter. Here were bodies that orbited something other than the Earth. If not everything orbited the Earth, then wasn't it possible the Earth itself could be in orbit? Galileo was persecuted by the Church for advocating the

What a mess!

What a mess!

There has been a lot of talk of carbon capture recently since it appears we will not be able to slow down burning fossil fuels anytime soon. So far humans have released 2500 billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere since heavy industrialisation began. I just wanted to think a

I was in an advert

I was in an advert

My PhD program put out a call for people to be in an advert and I accepted. I spent a day being made to feel like a celebrity by Joy of Angel Sharp Media. I'm really impressed with how good they managed to make us look! If anyone

Kills 99.9% of germs

Kills 99.9% of germs

You have likely seen this marketing phrase on disinfectant before, but what does it mean? Does it mean that of all the germs that exist, the product can kill 99.9% of the varieties? Not quite. Let’s indulge a little and dive into this. First of all, what’s

Creating a novel chaos game

Creating a novel chaos game

The concept of self-organised criticality (SOC) was invented in the late 80s. The idea is that a system can naturally evolve towards a critical point and then stay there. The example first used to introduce the idea was called the sandpile model. The sandpile model is a cellular automata with

Magnetic pendulum choice maker

Magnetic pendulum choice maker

Chaos is fascinating. Where a released pendulum will end up around magnets is incredibly complicated. You can explore this in a fantastic interactive visualisation from Ingo Berg. I decided a decision-making app where each magnet represented something you wanted to decide between, would be a fun project. Click the black

Game of life writer

Play This JavaScript app converts text into cells and plots them on a canvas. These cells then evolve according to the classic rules of the game of life. The game of life illustrates how complex behaviour can arise from simple rules, a key concept in chaos theory. In this case