Archive for May 2008
Exploring the ocean’s hidden worlds
Posted by: ozymandias1 on: May 30, 2008
- In: Biology | ocean
- 3 Comments
Another wonderful story from the World of Science: Ocean explorer Robert Ballard takes us on a mindbending trip to hidden worlds underwater, where he and other researchers are finding unexpected life, resources, even new mountains. I am very ignorant of what’s out there in the deep blue briny, but I do know of two wonderful sources [...]
Ten great ideas revisited
Posted by: ozymandias1 on: May 30, 2008
- In: Education | Science
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The amazing thing about our science education is not that so many run away from it, but rather that any at all stick with it. We really do an exceptional job of sucking out all the good stuff. There must be a website out there somewhere concentrating on the most wonderful ideas in science for the non-specialist, but [...]
Nuclear Fission resources
Posted by: ozymandias1 on: May 22, 2008
Cockroft and Walton experiment; Artificial splitting of the atom, as published in Nature: The brightness of the scintillations and the density of the tracks observed in the expansion chamber suggest that the particles are normal a-particles. If this point of view turns out to be correct, it seems not unlikely that the lithium isotope of [...]
Murray Gell-Mann – why I took Physics
Posted by: ozymandias1 on: May 22, 2008
Murray Gell-Mann, the Nobel prize-winning scientist who ‘discovered’ quarks and took the word from Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, thought that Physics at high school was “the dullest course I had ever taken”, and he only applied to study physics at university “to please my father”. Taken from; When we were kids: how a child becomes a [...]
Dublin Alchemist Cafe: Professor Steve Fuller
Posted by: ozymandias1 on: May 14, 2008
- In: Education | Physics | youtube
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Hope to take myself into the city tomorrow for a little intellectual stimulation. The Dublin Alchemist Cafe, as it says itself: is a forum for the discussion of important and interesting scientific issues that is much more informal and accessible than a public lecture. Tomorrow Steve Fuller, Professor of Sociology at University of Warwick will [...]
Last-week-of-term activities
Posted by: ozymandias1 on: May 14, 2008
- In: Education | Physics | syllabus | youtube
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What do you do to entertain a class of sixth years who reckon they have earned the right to not work in their final week? Today I introduced them to the intriguing character of Nikola Tesla It seemed to go down well. Tomorrow I’m hoping to try getting them to listen to a podcast; in [...]
My tip for the Leaving Cert Physics paper
Posted by: ozymandias1 on: May 13, 2008
- In: Education | Particle Physics | Physics | youtube
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The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in CERN will be the world’s largest particle accelerator when its construction is completed sometime this Summer. It’s a pretty big deal if you are a particle physicist, and even if not you are still likely to be bombarded with the news when it is finally switched on. ‘Tips’ aren’t [...]
CESI Blog
Posted by: ozymandias1 on: May 12, 2008
CESI (the Computer Education Society of Ireland) have just set up a forum for teachers at all levels (primary, secondary and tertiary) to promote the use of ICT and also to facilitate those who have ICT related questions. They may end up having a blog for the more philosophical issues, and keep the forum for [...]
Congratulations Scifest winners!!!
Posted by: ozymandias1 on: May 10, 2008
I mentioned that I was trying to promote Scifest as a means of getting students to do real science as opposed to the learning by rote and following cookbook recipe-type so-called experiments. So after promoting it among second, fourth and fifth years, I ended up with about eight groups, of which seven pulled out [...]
Learning to podcast
Posted by: ozymandias1 on: May 5, 2008
- In: Education | itunes
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This is a short audio about forces for my Second Year students revising for Summer Exams. I did a bit of podcasting a few years ago but have forgotten how I made the pieces accessable. I also need to learn how to jazz these things up a bit. This piece is hosted on the wordpress site [...]
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