Science

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.

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Ten great ideas revisited

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 I haven’t been able to find it.

So I’m going to do one.

Ten ideas. I’m sure the number will grow. Then link each to relevant external resources; these must be interesting, informative and aimed at an appropriate level.
For project work I could maybe get students to pick one which interests them, research it in detail and report back to the class.

Because I am fascinated by science, and am sick to death of teaching students how to measure the density of a stone.

I have put together a word document on this for a recent Fourth Year test; it’s a start.

Fun with the Van der Graff and Animoto

A study of concentration

We had the usual fun with the Van der Graff today. The weather was rather accommodating, and it tallied nicely with the last class before the long weekend.

I have never got a student’s hair to stand up dramatically, but i was drying the canvas belt with a hairdryer when I realised I could help things along a little by aiming it upwards into Fania’s hair. It loosened up the hair very nicely and the show was much more impressive as a result. I also got a student to hold up a mirror so Fania could see for herself what everyone else was laughing at.

I have seen a few examples of Animoto and how it does a pretty cool job of presenting photos, so I thought I’d head on over and check it out.

It really is pretty impressive, and very user-friendly. There might be a couple of thinks I would change, but then again that may just be me not familiar with the program.

It allows for automatic uploading to youtube, which was a pleasant surprise. The free version limits the clip to 30 seconds, so I might just invest in the longer version to check it out.

This is a clip I uploaded last year

 

When is a kilogram not a kilogram?

Many physics students will be familiar with the fact that the prototype kilogram is kept in a high-security vault in Paris. What I didn’t realise was that the mass of this specimen is changing, albeit very slightly.

So here’s the question; if this is the one and only true version of the kilogram, and it loses mass, doesn’t it still stay a kilogram?

And doesn’t that mean that other copies, which would have been correct originally, are now wrong?
(I think in fact that they may all be losing mass slightly.)

Something very unscientific about all this . . ., no wonder physicists are embarassed about it.

Seems a bit like when kids make up the rules of a game, and when it turns out that these don’t suit the leader of the gang, he just changes them.

Which seems as good an excuse as I am likely to get to show Eddie Izzard – Do you have a flag?
 

 

More youtube and some Flickr

Decided it was time to see what I could do with Flickr, so I spent the day taking photos of Junior Cert Science demo apparatus. The plan is that I will show this to students and they will have to name the demonstration. Hopefully it will help the second-years revise for Summer exams. It must be rather daunting to have to go from a year of short class tests, to a set of formal exams which require knowledge  taken in over the whole year.

Students can hopefully access this themselves if they wish, although I may  print it off for those who don’t have the facilities.

Bloody nice spectrum though innit?

Thanks Conor!

Of course there’s still the bread ‘n butter leaving cert material:

 

Laptops from €249

This form Dell

Laptop Computer

From €249 plus delivery.

I don’t know the specs but I reckon they would be ideal for working with dataloggers in Science projects like Scifest and Young Scientist, and I can’t imagine they are more expensive than the alternative mobile dataloggers; LabQuest and Xplorer GLX

You would still have to use their software and sensors, but still . . .??

The Ideology that dare not speak its name

The January edition of Science Spin included a supplement on choosing science as a career. I was asked to contribute my thru’penny bit as a science teacher. Most of the other contributors included their opinion of what science is, but either I wasn’t asked or, more likely, my reply was too boring to print. So here’s what I should have written:

Science is many things, but the more I find out the more I believe that Science is a tool used to maintain the inequality that exists between the First and Third world. It is  an instrument used to develop the military technology which enforces this inequality, and which in turn is fed by the unequal distribution of the world’s resources.

One of its strengths lies in its refusal to acknowledge its role in this. Indeed the mere questioning of this can label the critic as an ‘outsider’ and consequently negate the message or its potential validity.

For an example of this  look no further than the  manner in which the role played by war has influenced so many developments in Science, and how this is conveniently ignored for the sake of a more sanitised and noble picture which is what you will find in your school science text-book.

Now why couldn’t I think of that at the time?

It’s also only fair to acknowledge that the article was both interesting and very well written by Marie-Catherine Mousseau. It described very well the wide spectrum of careers available for graduates in Science. The magazine itself is also very impressive. I genuinely hadn’t read it in years but its production is top quality and I will certainly be checking it out again. See for yourself if you get a chance. In all good bookshops, as they say.

Science Spin