http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hdVjb2gRgQ

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.

I thought I would get back in the saddle with a post about a really positive CPD experience I had this weekend.  I drove down to Fortrose for a Saturday event organised by the ASE and IoP.  There was a good mix of workshops on offer and it was great to see so many primary staff joining the physics regulars for the day.

The first session I attended was run by Gregor from SSERC.  He brought a load of laptops with him and we had a chance to try using a useful piece of software called Tracker.  This is a great example of someone developing something for their students, finding out just how great it is and sharing it worldwide with others.  Tracker can do loads of things: analyse projectile motion, rotational motion and do spectral analysis. Best of all, it uses Java, so it works on Windows, OS X and linux.

The second session of the day began with a hands-on example of generating real data with Stuart Farmer, who handed on to Tania Johnston of the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh.  Tania shared the Observatory’s latest Deep Space resources for schools.  I worked through a group activity that bore a resemblance to galaxy battleships.

The idea is to work through a series of galaxy photographs and classify them into spiral, elliptical or unknown, then plot their location within the cluster on a quadrant.  By bringing the work of 4 groups together, the pattern of galaxy distribution, i.e. where do elliptical & spiral galaxies tend to appear in clusters, can be determined (I won’t spoil it for you).  There is another activity based on planet formation and exoplanets but I didn’t get an opportunity to try that one…

…the Play-Do looks fun though!  I really liked the observatory’s activities. They have have embedded a series of numeracy tasks into the packs so that they are not just about meeting space-oriented O&Es.

In the afternoon, I went to the Optoelectronics College workshop on illumination and communication with Martyn Crawshaw from Millburn Academy.  On completion of the workshop, I received a specially-designed kit worth £500 to help introduce S1/2 pupils at my to optoelectronics.

One of my AH Physics pupils has already spotted the LED board and plans to incorporate it into his investigation on determining Planck’s constant.

The last session of the day involved building a wet day alternative to the IoP rocket launcher.  Everyone was supplied with plastic piping and connectors to build a twin launcher to propel dragsters.  This would be a great activity for a corridor or school hall if the weather does not allow the use of the compressed air rocket launcher.

I’ve been on the receiving end of some horrific ASG CPD days recently – long, tedious sessions from which I have gained little.  I refer to days like that as herd CPD.  The science event on Saturday was a welcome change. The CPD available was relevant to me and was seriously hands-on.  This seems to agree with my learning style – sometimes the people who plan CPD events forget that teachers have learning styles too.

There is a lot to think about as the proposed new content will be unfamiliar to many teachers.  I for one have a very limited understanding of astrophysics and just enough knowledge of particle physics to get me through the small section in the current advanced higher course.  This means we need to think about resources for teachers as well as pupils.

One thought is that we may go for a solution that mirrors the new National Qualifications site for History, with multimedia resources alongside more conventional text-based support.

Another interesting aspect is the introduction of a practical half-unit called Researching Physics.  This will take the form of an investigation around a theme, with an interesting example that looks at ultra-violet radiation and skin cancer.  (The science of earthquakes has been suggested as an alternative topic.)

The meetings were held at SSERC and this has allowed us to try out ideas for the researching physics topic and consider new approaches to content with which we are already familiar.  SSERC’s Gregor Steele did a great job in developing activities to challenging our thinking.  Here are some photos I took during the practical sessions.

Investigating the effectiveness of different suncream “factors” at blocking uv.
	Measuring the irradiance of a uv light source.
Demonstrating particle physics experiments using a Teltron tube
	Using a coil and magnet as a vibration sensor.
Recording the induced voltage using Audacity

We also looked at the ways in which changing mass might affect the motion of a toy  (lots of things going on here – weight, centre of mass, friction and simple harmonic motion all playing a role in determining the motion of the wooden woodpecker)

and learned how to use tracker.jar to analyse projectile motion.

So far, it looks like my role is likely to involve the creation of digital resources for the new higher.  It could be a busy summer…

I had previously asked members of my Higher class to tell me the make and model of their mobile phone.  I checked these on the manufacturer web sites to get information on screen resolution and was surprised to discover that 240 pixels wide by 320 pixels high appears to be something of an industry standard.

I used a simple graphics package to create a series of white rectangles 240 pixels wide by 320 high and pasted in images I had scanned from an old Higher Physics past paper.  I used the graphics threshold levels to remove any residual greyness from the scans before inserting the text of each question around them.  Simple questions required two images each (one for the question and a second for the answer) while longer questions with multiple statements or diagrams required three or even four image files to complete.

I created seven multiple choice questions over a double period, creating text only questions would be much quicker than tweaking graphics.  I uploaded the image files to my phone in jpg format.  The results were encouraging, with both the text and images displayed clearly.  My only concern was that the order of the files had reversed when transferred to the phone by bluetooth.  On trying again, it seems that the problem is that the Apple iSync application transfers multiple files starting with the highest file name, while the phone stores files in the order of receipt.  This is an issue requiring a workaround before distributing quizzes to a class.

Here is a question from the set I made. I’ve left them at full size (240 x 320 pixels)

This week saw the first submission deadline since homework questions had been made available in the iTunes podcast directory.  My feedburner statistics suggested that just over half of the class had downloaded the homework using iTunes.  Looking at the Podpress data on my own WordPress dashboard, it looks like the others have downloaded direct from the blog instead.  I was pretty confident this was going to work.

When Wednesday came round, I was disappointed to receive only 11 sets of homework from a class of 19.  I felt fairly miserable about that and obviously my first instinct was to blame the new delivery mechanism for the sudden fall in submissions.  I mentioned it to my faculty head, who uses my room last thing on Wednesdays and he was more upbeat, telling me he’d just had a go at his Higher Biology set for an usually poor homework response and he had heard that the Chemistry dept were also reporting low levels of homework this week.  Clearly this was something bigger than a move to iTunes.  Perhaps we had hit the senior pupils’ party season?

I went ahead and uploaded the screencast solutions.  It had taken quite an effort on my part to prepare these so I was determined to persevere.  Since the solutions have gone online, I have spotted distinct spikes in the downloads.  It looks like my pupils aren’t using the “get all” option in iTunes but are focusing on certain sections of the solutions that have given them difficulty.  This isn’t an observation based solely on this week’s homework either.  A similar uneven distribution of views/downloads exists in the original files that kicked off the project on youtube.  I am wondering if pupils are actively choosing only to see worked solutions to those problems that presented them with difficulty, rather than watching all of the screencasts to reinforce what they have learned in class?

In the past couple of weeks, a few people have expressed an interest in this idea and have posted questions on Twitter.  Joe Rowing has picked up on the idea and is also trialling it.  Interestingly enough, Joe also teaches Physics.

I used Quicktime Pro to export the video in MP4 format.  I selected  the MP4 video format after reading this page which suggested it would be suitable for more than just iPods.  You wouldn’t have to use Quicktime for this, an online file conversion service like Zamzar would also work and save you some cash in the process.

I added the PodPress plugin to my WordPress-powered classroom blog to handle the media files.  I don’t think you really PodPress but it does provide a neat and automatic icon for the media file in your blog post and it has a widget you can use to add an iTunes subscription button to your blog’s sidebar.  For me, the main piece of magic is the Feedburner feed.  This is a free service that has excellent features such as the smartcast option.

Smartcast is the killer feature.  It allows you to create an enclosure (the thing that iTunes looks for in your blog’s feed) for any rich media file.  This is a blanket term that includes file types such as MP3, MP4 and, more importantly, PDF.

So here’s what I’ve done.  Pupils in the class have subscribed to my podcast in iTunes to download fully commented solutions to their last homework exercise.  This evening, I finished creating their next set of questions and uploaded them to my site as a pdf.  Thanks to feedburner’s smartcast, the pdf quickly appeared in iTunes.  The next time my pupils open up iTunes, they’ll get the homework exercise downloaded automatically on to their computers and the following week they’ll receive the screencast showing the worked solutions as a video podcast.

I have no idea how this will go down with pupils.  When the novelty subsides, will they see it as a creepy tree house?  I don’t know if it’s all that different from having a VLE for school work, although pupils know fine well what to find when they log in there.  Is the delivery of homework by iTunes an invasion of their recreational space?

Textbooks and teachers often use the example of a lift moving between floors/starting to move upwards/starting to move downwards but it’s rarely more than a thought experiment really since they can’t be followed up with a tangible, practical illustration.

Since our school has been made more accessible by the recent addition of a lift at reception, I spoke to our Head Teacher and, with a bemused look, she agreed that I could use the lift for a whole period to do experiments.  

We worked in pairs, taking turns at moving up and down between floors, looking for any signs of movement on the spring balance.  We successfully confirmed our “thought experiment” and some sharp pupils spotted evidence for Newton’s 2nd Law and shared their findings with the rest of us.  Pupils finding links to other aspects of the course without prompting was the icing on the cake!

image: “elevator” by Beard PaPa @ Flickr

I wanted to show pupils, step-by-step, how to measure angles and draw the lines representing the vectors to an appropriate scale. I tried begging an old blackboard protractor from the maths department but there didn’t seem to be any going spare. In desperation, I turned to the SMARTBoard software on my mac, even though the room I was using at the time had no IWB installed†. I found a brilliant protractor and ruler that I could easily move around the screen.

The best thing was that the protractor and ruler are such a good match to the physical equipment the pupils have to use when it is their turn to tackle the problem sheet. Actually that wasn’t the best thing. The total best thing was doing a scale diagram with these tools live in front of the class and coming within 0.4° of the angle they obtained using trigonometry

†This is probably a gross breach of the EULA. Sorry about that. Yes, really.