Was at a very interesting lecture at the ISTA AGM in UCC over the weekend, where Dr Jeremy Pritchard gave a lecture entitled ‘The evolution of evolution’. He spoke about how the eye was a difficult subject for Darwin to explain.
While the audience was mostly Biology teachers, I got to thinking about how I could introduce evolution into my own teaching.
We do a little bit on short-sightedness and long-sightedness in the Leaving Cert Physics course (under the heading of Lenses), and this would be an ideal spot to open up a discussion.

Dissecting a cow’s eye used to be allowed, but no longer is, but there is a link to a nice video of it, plus some other useful links here although it can take a while to download.

There is also a movie clip of how the eye itself could have evolved here, and an animated version here

Every so often I notice that the school library receives a copy of a journal/magazine entitled (I think) creation science, or something similar. I must look into it to see why we get this.

The Applied Maths class and the religion class got together a couple of weeks ago to discuss/debate many of the issues that bring Science and Religion together and also which bring them into conflict. It went very well; hopefully we can build upon it and do something similar in the future.