Month: July 2008

Science, evolution and creationism (again)

I have written before about creationism and science education, and how it is not mentioned in Junior Cert Science. Every so often these surveys appear in the papers; this one was in the New Scientist last May. Researchers polled a random sample of nearly 2000 high-school science teachers across the US in 2007:

[ ] asked about the teachers’ personal beliefs . . . 16% of the total said they believed human beings had been created by God within the last 10,000 years.

I guess the number shouldn’t be surprising, but I can’t help but feel a little uncomfortable.

Fun with magnets

I have a couple of old CRT televisions at the back of the lab, and bring them out to show what happens when you put a rare-earth magnet in front of them. However I obviously lack the imagination to come up with a show like this. I’ll be more adventurous next time; turn off the lights, turn on the trippy music, burn a few incense candles . . .

Course if I really needed to get the troops interested in Magnetism all I would need is a frog and a very strong magnet.

Templates from chutedesign and googledocs

So your whole lesson plan revolves around your students drawing graphs, but just at the last minute you realise you haven’t any graphpaper left.

Never fear – chutedesign to the rescue!

You can even choose the blank paper option:

Blank Paper – for those who cant open that damned printer to get a blank page out!

Now hasn’t that just made your day

 

And while you’re at it, check out the new Google Docs Templates: grading sheets, attendance sheets, class schedules and lots more. ‘Sure to be at least something there which you could use over the coming year.

Some cool science resources

Just got back from wonderful New Zealand yesterday and came across some of these impressive deals.

Digital calipers from aldi for €10, available from Sunday 13th (checkout blowtorch available also for €10). Why would anyone use the old-fashioned vernier calipers when you these cut out all the confusion. Ideal for ‘measuring the resistivity of wire’ experiment.

 

Dynamo torches from lidl for €10, available from Monday 14th. Use them at Junior Cert as an examle of energy conversions, and at Leaving Cert for demonstrating Electromagnetic Induction. I haven’t bought one yet but hopefully they can be taken apart to see the internal workings.

VHS to DVD converter for €168 from Maplin (Maplin doesn’t have an Irish website for some reason, but they do issue newsletters with their special deals). If, like me, you have a bank of VHS cassettes with numerous programs on each cassette, then is the ideal way to start afresh. This time around I use one DVD per program, and use an elecrtronic labeller (which I also got from lidl) to label each DVD. Our science department got one of these a couple of years ago but I reckon it was probably twice the price.
Maplin also currently have Infrared Thermometers for €33 and multimeters for €8 (I would check that ‘crocodile leads’ fit into these sockets before buying).

I was thrilled to see that Maplin have started stocking educational products from mutr. So many so-called ‘Science Toys’ that you see in toyshops look fantastic but are actually crap. Mutr (middlesex university teaching ressources) on the other hand are the business; I’m not even sure they do it for profit, certainly many of their products are unique and very reasonably priced.
Get your Christmas shopping done early this year