Just seen these pictures from the recent Endeavour shuttle mission. The photos speak for themselves.
The file sizes are too large to upload here and they may the page may take a little while to load, so be patient; it’s worth it
‘Course it could it just all be a hoax. You can do some pretty cool things with Photoshop these days.
Via the Science.ie newsletter
Antoinette O’Connor from Cork has won a medal for achieving first place in the country in Leaving Certificate Physics, awarded by Institute of Physics.
Nothing strange so far, after all someone has to come first, don’t they?
There’s more: Her sister Martha O’Connor won the award in 2005.
Still more: Another student from the same school, Deirdre O’Leary, won the award in 2000.
No prizes for guessing that all three were taught by the same teacher; serious respect to Diarmuid Hickey from Coachford College, Co. Cork
Read more on UCC ‘s website
Photo from Jeremy Nicholl on flickr
I have mentioned this before, but it’s worth throwing it up again (and again)
Given the low radiation doses received by most people exposed to the Chernobyl accident, no effects on fertility, numbers of stillbirths, adverse pregnancy outcomes or delivery complications have been demonstrated nor are there expected to be any. A modest but steady increase in reported congenital malformations in both contaminated and uncontaminated areas of Belarus appears related to improved reporting and not to radiation exposure
Source: World Health Organisation
It is a similar story for the survivors of the Hirishimo and Nagaski nuclear explosions.
This is always greeted with (i) disbelief, (ii) scepticism or (iii) amazement (at best) by my senior students.
I guess it’s very to argue with our gut feeling. But this is ultimately why we have this thing called SCIENCE, even if it is warts and all.
If Stalin got it right, and “One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic”, what is half a billion?
10 facts on the tobacco epidemic and global tobacco control
From the World Health Organisation: WHO
Lawrence of Cyberia has her own wonderful take on this quote.
It is what it says it is.
I have an Interactive Whiteboard.
I rarely if ever use it.
Unlike most people who never use these things I do actually know how to use it.
I just don’t know why I would.
I use the data projector and screen, along with a wireless mouse and keyboard to allow me remote access.
If I want to write I use the regular whiteboard nearby.
I never want to save anything I write on the board; they are usually clarifications to notes which students have a copy of, or maths questions, or diagrams which I can interact with using my board markers.
I feel a little bad about this because I initally went with the hype which declared that this would change my whole way of teaching, and so I applied for funding from the school and was the first in the school to get one. Since then we probably have ten or more in the school.
I actually had the IWB program open during this lesson, but I don’t see what advantage it provided.
What am I missing?
I can see why getting young ‘uns up to the board at Primary school level might be a novelty, but it doesn’t seem to hold the same appeal at secondary level, and anyway without an IWB students could still come up and use the wireless mouse.
I was reminded of this because Simon Lewis has written a fascinating article on inexpensive IWBs here. There can be little justification for forking out six grand when you can get basically the same service for one and a half.
But why do I need one at all?
I’m not for one second suggesting that these are a scam; hopefully someone will indeed tell me what I am missing!
There are some big misconceptions out there regarding students and internet safety.
Dean Shareski adresses this issue in a recent posting.
It should be mandatory reading for anyone involved in education.
The associated comments are also worth reading
But let’s face it: “THE INTERNET IS NOT AS DANGEROUS AS WE FIRST THOUGHT” is unlikely to be make the front page anytime soon.
It would be nice to have a central bank of information on this in Ireland – does it exist somewhere?
I introduce Heat Capacity by asking the following question: How come, when you get up in the middle of the night to take a pee, and walk across both tile and carpet, the tile seems much colder than the carpet even though in reality both are at the same temperature (room temperature)?
It introduces the concept of thermal conductivity, and also acts as a reminder to why we need objective measurements in science.
This video on firewalking would make a wonderful follow-up activity, and might just make some a little wary of ‘life-coaches’.
Thermal conductivity and Low heat capacity; Firewalking explained in terms of taking a cake out of an oven.
Would work at both Junior or Senior cycle.
So how could you design an experiment to ascertain who is right?
And then while we’re here at all, let’s look at an intertaining presentation by Michael Shermer on debunking pseudoscience.
From http://www.ted.com; part one of two. The second half is also well worth seeing.
Came across this before but was reminded of it by Ian Yorstan’s del.icio.us favourites.
As Ian writes:
A short video summarizing some of the most important characteristics of students today – how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime.
To which I would like to add: ‘and how out of date our education system is’.
Here’s another nice resource for an ethics class. It’s about the death penalty:
Good day
John Henderson has suggested setting up an email network on gmail for anybody interested in ‘ICT in Education’ issues. This may finally get us teachers talking to each other. I am just a little bit excited.Good man yourself John.
Bad day
Had to forego the lunch which followed because I had a mountain of ‘Mock’ papers to correct.
Good day
Came across this answer to the question ‘What is self-induction?’
Self-Induction is when you have been rejected so many times by clubs and have gotten so pathetic that you’ve actually inducted yourself into a non-existent club that its only member is you and you alone . . . . Oh I wish someone else would join.
Sean, you’ve a bright future ahead of you – I’m just not sure it’s going to be in Physics.And this in response to the question ‘What are the four fundamental forces in Nature?’
Science: Gravity Electromagnetic, Strong, Weak
Religion: God, The Holy Spirit, Jesus, Their own ego
(At this stage I would like to emphasise that these are not my own views :)).
Bad day
Remembered I offered the editor of the Irish Science Teachers’ Journal that I would write an aticle on ICT issues related to Science Teaching. Bad timing. Deadline looming. Need to work on it tonight.
Good Day
Took a break in the name of ‘research’ and googled “physics teacher blog” and found Dean Baird’s The Blog of Phyz.Lots of good reading, but I like this post the best so far. There are so many experiment books for ideas on demonstrations out there, but their day has surely passed due to the advent of video-sites like youtube.
I had heard of the Leidenfrost Effect before, but there can’t be too mant easier or more impressive demonstrations of it than this one.
He includes a couple of more clips, including one which goes wrong, which is nice to see because as every physics teacher knows whether we are comfortable admitting it or not, things go wrong A LOT in Physics.
Thanks Doug
Think for Yourself 