Month: February 2008

Fun with soda cans

I did a series of demonstrations yesterday involving soda cans and stuck the video of it on youtube.

I wanted it to be just one video but it went well over ten minutes (15 to be precise) so I had to split it in two.
It was fun though.
One of the problems with this sort of thing is that students will either have seen everything before in lessons, or will probably have seen me prepare them, so sometimes they need a little encouragement when it comes to showing their appreciation 🙂

Today we did a fun class on microwaving anything we could get out hands on.
The simple lightbulb was by far the most impressive.
I’ll try it again after midterm and hopefully video it.

St Columba’s College: Nanotechnology project

I was browsing the award-winning St. Colomba’s College English Department blog (see blogroll on the right) and came across the school’s excellent Science Site.

This in turn led to a link to their Transition Year Nanotechnology competition project, which consisted of a fictional website of a hospital set in 2027, detailing the role of nanotechnology in their treatment centres.

Wonderful stuff, deserved more publicity (or did that pass me by?).

SCC appear to be setting the standard in relation to incorporation of ICT in schools, and are giving a presentation at the CESI conference this Friday. Looking forward to it.

Battle at Kruger

 Watch as a baby buffalo is caught in the jaws of four lions, then acts as the rope in a tug of war between the lions and some crocs, and finally gets rescued by her extended family.
Simply amazing

Was I the only one rooting for the lions?
I say that a baby lion is cuter than a baby buffalo and on that faultless logic I won’t sleep tonight for worrying about what happened to the lions.
They  have to eat too you know.
 
There are of course some who would suggest that animals getting eaten alive is the sort of thing that goes on every day when Disney isn’t around.
We have a name for these nasty people – we call them scientists.
In an ideal world they are responsible for seperating fact from that which we wish to be true.
Here endeth my sermon.
Go in peace.
🙂

The Counter-Intuitive Nature of Physics

Okay, here’s the deal.

You’re in a car going forward at 100 km/hr. You’re finished with your (glass) bottle of lucozade and naturally you just want to get rid of it by throwing it out the window. But you’re not a complete muppet; you would prefer if the bottle didn’t actully break upon impact.

So in what direction and at what speed should you throw the bottle?

Hint: Scroll forward to 3 minutes 50 seconds of this cool, cool video (unfortunately this site doesn’t seem to accept video embedding from this site).

Now I know that videos are no substitution for the real thing, but I think in this instance we can make an exception.

Nice project for Scifest

Here’s another nice idea for generating electricity; ideal for Scifest or Young Scientist project if only to investigate its feasability.

“The students’ test case . . . was a prototype stool that exploits the passive act of sitting to generate power. The weight of the body on the seat causes a flywheel to spin, which powers a dynamo that, in turn, lights four LEDs.

“People tended to be delighted by sitting on the stool and would get up and down repeatedly,” recalls Graham.

The Crowd Farm is not intended for home use. According to Graham and Jusczyk, a single human step can only power two 60W light bulbs for one flickering second. But get a crowd in motion, multiply that single step by 28,527 steps, for example, and the result is enough energy to power a moving train for one second. “

sap-crowd-enlarged2.jpg