Category: Paul’s Puzzles

20th March 2020

Either Can you explain how you instruct each of your fingers and finger muscles to type? (Just watch and let the weirdness hit you!) (If you are a parent reading this, you might enjoy this ‘In our Time’ on Free Will and Determinism) Or Why are astronauts so brave? Can you be born courageous and…

13th March 2020

Paul’s Puzzles this week are in response to Science Week. Many thanks to Professor Jason Riley from Imperial for a brilliant series of assemblies and enrichment class. He provided Jason’s Puzzle. Is God a Scientist or an Engineer? Or Do any animals, apart from us, appreciate the beauty of the universe? Or Should you stop…

6th March 2020

Paul’s Puzzles this week are: Either Profound contemplation after traditional English breakfast. Can you really explain how Fairy Liquid (or its equivalent) works? (Washing up before such products existed, must have taken forever, especially after duck roast or a breakfast like the one my family has just had. &… Doesn’t egg yolk show amazing tenacity…

28th February 2020

Paul’s Puzzles this week are: Either Scientists have detected evidence of a colossal explosion in space – five times bigger than anything observed before. The huge release of energy is thought to have emanated from a supermassive black hole some 390 million light years from Earth. The eruption is said to have left a giant…

7th February 2020

Paul’s EXTRA Puzzle this week ……. Watching Storm Ciara overwhelming the trees in our communal garden and howling around the scaffolding opposite my study window, I could not but ask… Can I really explain the origin of wind and the force of this storm? Can you…really? I also remembered the amazing poem by Ted Hughes….

31st January 2020

Paul’s Puzzles this week are: Either Will there still be nations in 1000 years’ time? Which will be the strongest? (Perhaps the UK will be on the Dark Side of the Moon by then?) Or If there are developed life forms on other planets in the Universe will they be in the form of nations,…

24th January 2020

Paul’s Puzzles this week are: Either Does your ultimate success in life depend mainly on the good luck of where you were born and your family, rather than your effort or natural ability? Or Why do accents affect us so differently? This week, I have been enraptured by the beauty and music of Scottish accents….

10th January 2020

Paul’s Puzzles this week are: Either Do I really understand what is causing the forest fires in Australia? Don’t such events show human beings are much weaker than they think, even with their computers and i-phones and missiles? Or Given what is happening in the US, Iran and Australia and Syria, is it really worthwhile…

6th December 2019

Paul’s Puzzles this week flow from questions asked during Dr Xander’s Operation Ouch assemblies to the Junior and Senior House and discussions afterwards. Either How does my brain think? (Dr Xander scratched his head and replied, ‘You better ask Paul that one!’) Or If I think the question, ‘How does my brain think, in another…

1st November 2019

Either Is it possible that my (your) watching and willing England to beat South Africa (or vice versa!) from England, can influence the outcome in Japan? If not, why is that I believe, deep down, it can? Is it like a kind of sporting ‘prayer’? Or The legal age of marital consent, with parental permission,…