never mind the optics

I’ve just watched the latest Periodic Videos film where Prof. Martyn Poliakoff explains, in simplified terms, what went on when Canadian scientists “tricked” helium into behaving like hydrogen in a reaction.

The story has been out for a few weeks now, you can read reports of it here or here.

I’m just about to cover the short fundamental forces & particle physics topics with my Advanced Higher Physics class and I’ll show this to them, even if I am already worried about the questions it may raise.

In my previous post, I mentioned the prevailing risk-averse culture in science education.  I’m not afraid to share that I have some questions of my own about this simplified video.

• Why is the muon closer to the nucleus than the remaining electron?  I know that muons are significantly heavier than electrons, mostly thanks to Rabi‘s quote “A heavy electron. Who ordered that?”  The muon has the same charge as the electron, so I guess it’s not simply an electrostatic reason.  Is it due to equating the electrostatic and centripetal forces on the muon or is there more to it?
• Should we even be thinking of the muon and electron as particles?
• Muons have a short half life of around 2 microseconds.  Half life is in the muon timeframe and dilated according to Special Relativity.  This is for free muons though.  What happens to an electrostatically-bound muon? Does this make a difference?  I’m only asking because there is a difference between free and bound neutrons.

These questions flag up my insecurity about particle physics.  This is one area I will need to get my head round ahead of the new Higher Physics, whenever it is launched.

Last month, David Noble invited me to participate in an online discussion on Science Education n Scotland. Also on the panel were Nick Hood and Drew Burrett, both physics teachers, and Fearghal Kelly, a biology teacher seconded to East Lothian Council as Curriculum for Excellence Development Officer.

During the conversation, we touched upon;

• assessment in CfE
• the risk-averse culture that exists in the teaching of general science
• do we teach science by presenting a series of facts?
• use of ICT in the science classroom
• support opportunities available from higher education and other organisations

The event was streamed lived and subsequently posted to the EDUTalk posterous site.  I can’t get to the EDUTalk site from my school due to filtering, so I’ve uploaded the audio file to this site.  Click on the player below to listen.  Apologies for the variable audio quality.

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I downloaded SMART Notebook 10.7 for mac last night after Danny Nicholson blogged that it was available.  First thing’s first: I am delighted to report that SMART have finally fixed my biggest issue with their software.

For some reason, despite telling every previous version of SMART software during the installation process that I do not want the application to run at login, it has always gone ahead and started up of it’s own accord.  There is a long thread on this issue at the smarttech.com forum.  This was really annoying and, despite several requests to SMART, I did not receive a response from them.

So thank you, SMART, for finally listening to mac users.

Once i got it running, a tutorial popped up to tell me about the new features. Although it was disappointing to see that most of these new goodies seem to be restricted to users with the newer 800 SMARTBoard series, I spotted a new feature for all systems – the calligraphic pen.

I couldn’t find it anywhere on the toolbar and wondered if it had to be added by customising the toolbar.

I couldn’t find it there either.

When I got in to school today, I plugged in my 600 series SMARTBoard and loaded up the new notebook software.  This time, the calligraphic pen appeared in the top toolbar beside all the other pens.  You need to be plugged in to the IWB before the calligraphic pen is available as an option.

As someone who has struggled to produce legible handwriting on the IWB in the past, I quite liked the way that this pen tidied up my writing. Compare my writing in the standard pen (green) with the calligraphic pen (blue) in this screenshot.

I think the blue writing has been cleaned up.  The letters are spaced more evenly and they are now all at a similar height.  I need to check what pupils think of it, but this could be a serious boost to a pupil’s confidence when writing on the board.

I read something Shawn Cornally’s blog about Star Wars.  Then I noticed that Rhett Allain had written a follow-up to Shawn’s post.  I love Star Wars and, like Rhett, there are some quotes that make their way into lessons.  My favourite is stolen from Yoda:

Do or do not, There is no try.

Although any child, regardless of their given name, might find themselves on the end of the prompt

Use the force, Luke!

when looking <cough> at a problem concerning Newton’s laws.

I have a pair of Star Wars visual aids in my classroom.  The first is a huge Darth Vader poster I made using The Rasterbator site a few years back.  If your school’s web filtering software blocks that site due to it’s naughty-ish name, you can do the same thing over at blockposters.

Vader is made from 20 sheets of A4 paper sellotaped together at the back and covered with a generous layer of hairspray to fix the toner.  His role is to remind pupils that the F in F=ma stands for the unbalanced force.

The second Star Wars item is the T-shirt I recently stuck to the wall above my SMARTBoard.  Colleagues think it’s weird to have a T-shirt up there instead of a poster – they may be right but does that matter?

I bought it from a US T-shirt site that had a sale on just after Christmas.  It’s been on the wall for a month now but the comments have continued.

I know what that means!

When can we do that?

What sort of forces will we do in Standard Grade?

The appeal of Star Wars isn’t limited to mechanics-based topics.  It’s recently had a mention in an electricity lesson.  I’m doing parallel circuits with both S3 classes at the moment.  They’ve just finished resistance in parallel where we practised using

and they know which one of these is my favourite resistor.  Here is a clue.

Finally, what’s not to like in this “making of” the Passat advert.

Over the past 18 months, I’ve been involved off-and-on with the Scottish end of a Science in Society project called S-TEAM, looking at inquiry-based science teaching.

As a member of the reference group, I’ve given my perspective as a classroom teacher and some of my classroom experiences of open-ended investigation with S1/S2 pupils have been included in articles on the nature of an inquiry-based approach to science in the classroom.

A shortened version of our first article has just been published in the February newsletter of the International Council of Associations for Science Education (ICASE).  The article is based on work I did with a S2 class in 2008.

I blogged about the project at the time.  You can download a pdf of the newsletter using the link at the end of this post, our article is on pages 6-8.

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I’ve been working through a short topic on acids and alkalis with my S2 class. In previous years, I’ve introduced the idea of the pH scale as a way of measuring the strength or an acid or alkali and then gone on to determine the pH of different substances.

I changed it a little this year.  We took time out to test a range of household items (diet coke, lemon juice, liquid soap, toothpaste, washing-up liquid, non-bio detergent, vinegar, shampoo, hand cream and milk) with universal indicator before I had even mentioned pH to the class.

The group task seemed to be engaging.  I heard discussions about the significance of the different colours on the paper test strips.  One group organised their dishes containing the samples according to their state: solid, liquid or “goo” (toothpaste & hand cream), while others rearranged them to follow the order of colours in the testing chart (red to purple).

image courtesy of Edward Stevens

Each group photographed their final arrangement and then we set about cleaning all the dirty glassware but we didn’t get round to capturing any of this activity in jotters as the period bell had crept up on us.

Next day, the jotters came out and photos were shared on the projector. Ideas about the significance of colour in the test strips were discussed and we wrote about the pH scale, sketching the range of colours and giving examples of familiar chemicals having various pH values.

This wasn’t the usual sequence of events for a pair of lessons, so I asked the pupils what they thought about the way our two lessons had played out.  I pretty much expected them to say that they preferred practical work to be spread out.  So I was surprised when almost everyone liked it better when a whole lesson of practical was followed it up with a non-practical lesson to speak about their experiment and write it up in their jotter.

Their reasoning was that they could focus on the experiment better if they were not up and down from their seat all the time, or writing something in their jotter at the end and then rushing to put equipment away before the bell.

I think I share these pupils’ dislike for being jostled around like that.  I can recall one particularly unsettling twilight inset session that felt like suped-up speed dating round the school hall to share ideas on the latest topic.  No time to gather thoughts, process information or choose your next words. Some pupils have said lessons involving cooperative learning strategies are like this.  Are they?

The next week, we worked to the practical period followed by discussion/reporting period.  Thanks to the home economics department, we were able to chop up red cabbage and fresh beetroot to make out own free, if slightly smelly, pH indicators.

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When’s the last time you cooked beetroot over a Bunsen burner?