My friend Dee Maguire reminded me recently of some very useful videos on teachers tv of physics teacher David Robinson in action. Some of these are also on youtube:
The magnetic gun is also referred to as a ‘Gaussian gun’.
We had a bit of fun puting a basic one together at the end of class the other day.
Other video clips of David demonstrating can be found here on teachers tv; the radioactivity clip is particularly impressive.
You can also enter his name into the youtube seachbox for other demonstrations.
The Large Hardon Collider is due to be turned on this day next week (Wednesday, 10th of September), so it’s not a bad time to put together some useful resources to show to the troops to give them some idea of what it’s all about.
At just under 5 minutes, the Large Hadron Rap isn’t a bad place to start:
The ‘rappers’ mention dark energy and dark matter; comprising 96% of the universe between them, they can’t be directly measured, but their influence is immense. Find out more by watching Patricia Burchat speak at TED:
Want more? Try ‘Most of the Universe is Missing‘
Mary Mulvihill over at Science@Culture reminds us that BBCRadio 4 is devoting the entire day to the event. Watch Dara O’Briain, among others, give his rather unique take on the event. Not a big fan of homeopathy or Deepak Chopra is our Dara. He does appear to be a fan of Physics though; ‘wonder how he got on with Science in school? He strikes me as someone I’d have to keep on when it came to handing out chemicals!
Think for Yourself 