Back then I used to teach Applied Maths in probably much the same way as  everybody else – spend most of the time teaching from one of the textbooks and towards the end of sixth year revise using exam papers.

Results were ok but nothing spectacular

Then, while browsing through some very old papers to see how the standard of questions had changed over the years I spotted something unusual. Almost every question which appeared in recent years was similar to at least one other question on an older paper – the natural conclusion being that if you cover all the old papers along with the recent ones you really should see very little new material in the leaving cert exam.

I can’t imagine I’m the first to make the connection between current and past papers, and for all I know experienced teachers were probably saying this for years to anyone who would listen. But for me it’s news – and the more people that know it then the more likely it is that we’re all on a level playing pitch.

The old exam papers that I came across were left by my predecessor (Dave Clarke) and the solutions were all provided by another colleague  when I first started teaching the subject (Ciaran O Sullivan). The questions were converted to word format and the solutions were scanned in and saved as pdf files.

I next took all the questions and grouped them into similar themes and arranged them in order of difficulty, so for just about every type of problem there are a couple of example questions.

Using narrow margin and size 12 font (no spacing) each topic still comes to between 30 and 40 pages, so it’s important that if photocopying these for your students you choose‘1-sided to 2-sided’ and  ‘back-to-back’ on the photocopier. This reduces the pages needed by a factor of 4. In many cases I have put in some extra introductory questions from Ordinary Level, but usually you can go straight into Higher Level questions within a couple of classes.

For many questions I have a section where I offer hints on answering the questions for students who wish to have a little help without looking at the solution outright.

Initial results indicate that this new approach is working.

Last year the class results were the best they have ever been since I started teaching the subject.

I’m still the same teacher – not great, not bad, probably somewhere in between, but I believe passionately that we need to share our ideas and resources, not keep them locked up for just our own students.

So whether you are a student or a teacher you fill find everything that I have used online:
Exam papers and marking schemes are here (note that the official marking schemes only go back to the year 2000. There are another 3 or 4 more official schemes but for some reason these are not available online so I hope to scan them in and upload them over the next week or two.

Worked solutions going back to 1970 are here. Note that these are not complete but as we answer the missing questions in class I will scan in the solutions and upload them.

The notes that I have compiled for each chapter are here.

If you are reading this as a teacher then please join our discussion group (see the homepage to forward your email address) –and if you encounter any problems just drop me a line and let me know and we will do out best to resolve it.

It took a little time to put all of this together  (actually it took a lorra’ lorra’ time) but the point is this; I can’t think of any other attritute I posess apart from these notes which might be responsible for the impressive results so if you are a new teacher you have nothing to lose by downloading them and having them as one more resource in your armoury.

The irony here is that the Minister for Educaiton and Skills has recently announced that he is not happy with the fact that so many Leaving Cert exams are predictable in nature and has put pressure on the Exams Commission to change this, so I hope I’m not letting the cat out of the bag here.

There was also a suggestion in some quartes that the subject itself may get subsumed into Project Maths and so disappear altogether.

That would be a shame.

Oh.
One other thing. Congratulations to one of last year’s students – Stefan Oehler – on receiving a gold medal for achieving the top mark in the country. Next year this could be one of your students.

2. Trays
More specifically, gratnell trays.
Durable, stackable, availabe in a range of sizes and colours.

3. Sweet boxes
More specifically haribo boxes. For storing all the small bits; everything from protractors to spatulas to  test-tubes.
They also act as little basins of water if need be. And they’re all completely free.

Feel free to incorporate as much or as little of it as you like; if I make any major changes I will let you know via the blog or twitter.

The plan itself can be accessed directly from here or from the homepage of thephysicsteacher.ie

Feel free to offer constructive critisism

I hope to get around to producing something similar for Applied Maths at a later stage.

Wouldn’t it be nice if every department in every school had to put their subject plans online – I’m sure it would be appreciated by parents who are looking to decide what school to send their children to.

• The teacher has got their own Personal Learning Network and engages with it.

• The teacher tries to introduce some new initiave or strategy into their teaching every year, and then tries to evaluate its success or failure.

• The teacher encourages (constructive) feedback from all quarters.

• The teacher is not teaching in a style that is somewhere between 400 and 4000 years old.

• The teacher is familiar with Differentiated Learning and Assessment for Learning and has some initial strategies for incorporating both of these into lesson plans.
  In relation to Differentiated Learning the teaching strategies should aim to cater for both those with learning difficulties and those who need further higher-order thinking activites.

Hopefully I won’t get inspected by one of these inspectors anytime soon.

First up, where did all the stuff that makes up you and me come from?

Hold up your hand: You are looking at stardust made flesh. The iron in your blood, the calcium in your bones, the oxygen that fills your lungs each time you take a breath – all were baked in the fiery ovens deep within stars and blown into space when those stars grew old and perished. Each one of us was quite literally made in heaven. Modern science has shown us that we are more intimately connected to the stars than anyone dared to guess.”

The author of this magical piece, as far as I establish, is Marcus Chown, but if anyobdy can confirm or correct I would appreciate it.

I have this taped to the outside of my lab door, and was delighted to see a first-year take it down into her notebook recently (not sure the senior years ever stop to even notice it, but maybe that says more about our education than anything else).

It turns out that pretty much all the hydrogen in and around us is here from the time of the Big Bang over 13 billion years ago, and most of the helium is also that old (although helium is still being created all around us in the form of nuclear radiation). These are the first two elements in the periodic table. These eventually formed stars and in the process (nuclear fusion) formed the next 24 elements (up to iron). But even the energies involved in the sun’s day-to-day activites aren’t great enough to produce elements heavier than iron. So where did all the other 90 elements come from? (and remember that all these elements are what you and I are made from today).

Eventually the fuel (and energy) to produce fusion runs out and thus begings the final steps of a star’s incredible journey. But even in death they have a sting. Most ‘dead’ stars don’t just sit there, no sirree bob. The phrase ” it’s better to burn out than fade away” cannot be more apt than when applied to the death knell of one of these incredible stellar objects. If the star has enough mass then after collapsing in on itself it ‘rebounds’ and sends out the mother of all shock waves, one which is so strong that it actually tears the sun itself apart – it has become a ‘supernova’. A supernova explosion can be as bright as 4 billion (yes billion) suns. Not surprisingly it can become the brightest thing in the night sky for days (the last documented one within out own galaxy seeems to have been in 1604, but the Chinese also had written about one a thousand years before that).  Not that the 1604 explosion actually happened in 1604; it actually happened 13,000 years previously – it just took that long for the light to get from there to here (‘there’ and ‘here’ also being relative terms). But I digress.

When the star explodes the energy it contains is now sufficient to create all the heavier elements above iron, from copper upwards.

So there you have it: we are stardust.

The Amerian physicist Neil de Grasse Tyson sums it up rather nicely:

The gentleman you saw briefly in the background is Carl Sagan

Sagan was like Richard Dawkins without the arrogance, indeed he was a much more successful communicator  because he delibertately chose to preach not just to the converted, but to all. He would not have been impressed with Dawkins:

People are not stupid. They believe things for reasons. The last way for skeptics to get the attention of bright, curious, intelligent people is to belittle or condescend or to show arrogance toward their beliefs.

Here is Sagan taking us on a whirlwind tour of the history of our planetary and biological evolution.

But of course there’s no chance that any of the good stuff here will ever appear on a syllabus near you.
It’s also pretty unlikely that, with the exception of Humphrey Jones over at the frogblog, many other science teachers get animated by this. It seems to be the humanities teachers who are more likely to tackle the mystery and wonder of science. I guess those teachers who are fascinated by the wonder in Science are happy enough to enthuse their own students and leave it at that.
For another day perhaps.

And now for something completely different:

Science really does seem to be coming back into fashion – no longer is it just for the nerds. Or maybe it still is for nerds, but nerds are now cool. Thank you Stephen Fry.
Here’s Daniel Radcliff’s version:

Finally, for something a little more light. And for bonus points, for what sitcom do this band have an even more catchy tune?

Naming of Parts

Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And tomorrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But today,
Today we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens,
And today we have naming of parts.

This is the lower sling swivel. And this
Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,
Which in your case you have not got. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,
Which in our case we have not got.

This is the safety-catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy
If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms
Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see
Any of them using their finger.

And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers
They call it easing the Spring.

They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy
If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
For today we have naming of parts.

I posted this on a Physics teachers’ forum a number of years back and one reader was so impressed by the poem that she immediately adapted it to her own lesson. I obviously wasn’t the only admirer of her work – the adapted poem appeared in the journal “Physics Education” shortly afterwards. I haved included it here with the kind permission of the author.

Induced emf

Phoebe Wales

To-day we have induced emf. Yesterday,
We had motor effect. And to-morrow morning,
We shall have eddy current braking. But to-day,
To-day we have induced emf. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighbouring gardens,
And to-day we induced emf.

This is the flux density. And this
Is the flux, whose use you will see,
When you differentiate it with respect to time. And this is the cosine of the angle,
Which in your case you don’t need to do. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,
Which in your case you don’t need to do.

This is Lenz’s law, which is just an addition
To what Faraday had already said. And please do not let me see
Anyone using the wrong units. You can derive them quite easily
from SI units. The blossoms
Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see them
Using the wrong units.

And this you can see is how quickly flux changes. The purpose of this
Is to calculate the emf. We can apply it
To an isolated wire: this creates
A pd between terminals. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
A pd between terminals.

They call it Fleming’s right hand rule: it is perfectly easy
If you have any spatial awareness: take your right thumb,
And first finger, and second finger, and the directions they point,
Clearly give you the answer; and the almond-blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
For to-day we have induced emf.

By Walt Whitman

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,

When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

What I find fascinating is that neither Feynman or Dawkins (or indeed C.P. Snow himself) seem to wonder why many artists have such a poor view of science. Walt Whitman’s poem above seems to be a fair reflection of how scientists in general are viewed by  the public at large.

For me, this poor image of Science (and scientists) is generated in school. The textbooks are terrible, the syllabus even more so, and it is only the enthusiasm of the odd teacher that creates any sort of positive image of the subject. It seems to me that science teachers at secondary level and lecturers at third level do very little to inspire wonder in any student who isn’t already fascinated by the subject. I have said it on many occasions before; when you consider the enthusiasm of students for the subject when they first encounter it in first year, and contrast this with their weariness for the subject in sixth year, it’s a wonder any of them choose to keep it on at third level. Of course the pigeon-holing of all knowledge into outdated compartments called ‘Subjects’ may also have something to do with this.

And unfortunately all the Science Weeks and Science Gallaries and Cities of Science in the world won’t change this.

What might result in change is if more attention was paid to our abysmal syllabus by some of these folk who are so heavily involved in promotion of science ourside the classroom; perhaps if enough artists and writers addressed this issue . . . a new romantic movement anyone?

Thanks to my colleague Mr Devitt for reminding me of the Walt Whitman poem. Young Devitt is one of those indivuals who is as happy talking Physics/Science as he is talking History (his trade). I am fortunate in my school to have a number of such colleagues, but as with teachers  everywhere else there is just so little time or opportunity to allow for cross-pollination of this sort. What I find fascinating about discussions with colleagues from the humanities side of the fence is that they always seem to have more of a sense of wonder for the (science) ideas than do my science-teacher colleagues. I don’t know why that is.

If you haven’t yet bought your Christmas pressies, you could do a lot worse than consider teachersource.com as your one-stop shop.

I have been using it for years; it’s a fantastic source for science ‘toys’ for your lab, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t use it to stock up on presents for the little ones in your life – ideally they won’t have started secondary school yet so will still be fascinated by Science.
In fact this year I pointed the site out to my first and second-years and they have actually used it themselves to order presents. And it’s all Science!
Their two hottest items are the fun fly-stick and this, their most recent item – the air swimmer

One tip: if you opt for the express delivery (via UPS) it’s not only more expensive but you will also be caught for customs duty. Beware!

Then Jesus took his disciples up the mountain and gathered them around him

He taught them saying:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are the meek.
Blessed are they that mourn.
Blessed are the merciful.
Blessed are they that thirst for justice.
Blessed are you when you are persecuted.
Blessed are you when you when you suffer.
Be glad and rejoice for your reward is great in heaven.”

And James said “are we supposed to know this?”
And Simon Peter said “will we have a test on this?”
And Phillip said “I don’t have any paper.”
And Bartholomew said “do we have to spell correctly?”
And Mark said “do we have to hand this in?”
And John said “the other disciples didn’t have to learn this.”
And Matthew said “may I go to the toilet?”

Then one of the Pharisees who was present asked to see Jesus’ lesson plan
and inquired of Jesus:
“Where are your learning and assessment objectives?
What range of teaching strategies did you draw from?
Did you provide a differentiated provision?
Can I see a cross section of pupils work?

And Jesus wept.

This needs to change. Few if any of us are so expert in our teaching that we have nothing left to learn. In the past establishing a space for this learning to occur was the main stumbling block but now with the advent of technology there is no such excuse. The experts call it a PLN – a professional learning network – and it should revolutionise education. It works like this: sign up to twitter and start following someone (anyone – it doesn’t matter who; @thefrogblog wouldn’t be a bad starting point). Very quickly you will start receiving tweets and links from other teachers. You can then choose to ‘unfollow’ those who don’t appeal to you. It’s a very fluid process and in the main people don’t mind (or probably even know) if you unfollow them so don’t think you are signing up to some lifelong commitment. It’s quite likely you will chance upon a number of people who you know personally but didn’t realise were on Twitter.

Slowly you will begin to establish a list of people who you rate highly – you are now developing a PLN. You are in complete control and with time should come the confidence to contribute yourself. It’s only then that you realise the potential. Personally I find the posts of physics teacher @fnoschese to be of greatest benefit but that could all change tomorrow if my interests take a different turn.

I imagine many teachers have developed a PLN without ever realising what it was called and chances are that in the past it was through personal communication via a subject organisation like the ISTA. Probably the greatest assistance to my professional development over the years was a discussion group for teachers of physics in Britain and Ireland as part of the Institute of Physics. It was a place where I could post any problems that I had in either understanding a concept or indeed explaining the concept to students. But its greatest feature was in reading the comments that other teachers wrote which made me realise that concepts which I thought I understood were completely wrong and in many instances were perfect examples of the type of misconception which I was trying to eradicate in my own students’ heads.

The amount of time I was able to give to this varied enormously but now with the advent of Twitter and the smartphone all of this information is literally at the touch of a button.

One consequence of all this however is to make me realise that my style of teaching is highly questionable from a pedagogical point of view. It might be all bells and whistles, the students may love it and I get a great sense of satisfaction from it, but all the research shows that this traditional model is pretty ineffective. Frank Nochese (mentioned above) refers to it as ‘pseudoteaching’ and I like to turn that around and suggest that what my students are doing in the main is ‘pseudolearning’; I think they’re learning, they think they’re learning and the exam results are keeping everybody happy, but it only takes a little prodding to realise that much of this learning is superficial – concepts are not really understood, they are merely ‘learned off by heart’. And that’s not good enough. The use of assessment as a learning tool instead of its current function which is simply to assign grades is another example of how I have fallen behind as a professional.But that’s for another day.

The point is, whatever we call it, we all need to be in constant communication with colleagues. We all need to give and receive feedback. We all need to strive to improve.

Currently there is little external incentive to develop a PLN, neither are there any penalties for not doing so, but one would hope that it is only a matter of time before this changes. Watch this space.