Tag: ICT

Teaching about Radioactivity without Sources

Radioactivity is an exciting, mysterious and scary part of physics for many students, often because their ideas about 'radiation' are closely associated with their ideas about superheroes. Frequently my class discussions with students to gauge their prior knowledge about radiation and radioactivity come round to Stan Lee's Marvel Comics creations - 'Spiderman' and  'The Incredible Hulk'. After explaining...


Home-Made Eclipse Viewer

Next Friday, 20th March 2015, the best eclipse in over 50 years will reach between 90-95% of totality in the skies over Scotland. The online physics communities have been awash with chat and links on how to view the event, and what useful physics can be done with classes. Hoping to do something with my...


A Modern Inconvenience

I should have seen it coming, I should have been prepared, but it still came as a shock when Google Chrome told me my blog had been blacklisted as a potential source of malware.   Initially I didn't know what to do. Ignore the warning and go to the site, taking the risk that I'd...


Newton's Rings

I've been trying to show my AH pupils all of the experimental work for Unit 3 during this week, as it's the last week of the course before their NAB next week. Having gone over much of the theory before Easter and encouraging them to cover the theory on Scholar, I set up a few...


#tmslf11 - Round Table - Glow: Love it/Hate it/Want it

On Wednesday 21st September over 100 education professionals attended TeachMeet SLF 11 at the Glasgow Science Centre. Though not giving a presentation, I did participate by hosting a Round Table discussion on Glow, Scotland's National Education Intranet. There has recently been a great deal of discussion about the future for Glow and ICT in general...


WiiMotes for Physics Experiments

I've been trying to get to grips with WiiMote Physics in the last week or so. It is a piece of free software which utilises Bluetooth connectivity on your PC to receive data from a Wii gaming controller. A WiiMote has three accelerometers and an infra red camera inside. Using these it takes 100 measurements from each detector...