Saturday 7th July The fourth lecture/demonstration was “Earth Science: The Seismology story for ages 14 to 19” given by Stephen Davies, ESEU facilitator. Looking inside the Earth with physics is needed to locate the materials (monitoring and metal detecting). Physics is needed for the mineral exploitation. Physics is even needed in archaeology. Physics produces the […]

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Saturday July 7th The third lecture was given by Lynne Long, Schools Liaison Officer for the School of Physics and Astronomy at Birmingham University. She started her lecture by looking at something really cold. Children are fascinated by liquid nitrogen because it looks hot, although steam vapour goes up. Not terribly clear in the above […]

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Saturday 7th July The second lecture was about Materials in action given by Dr Diane Aston, training and education executive at the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining. Dr Aston began by explaining that everything we use or make has its origins in the Earth’s crust. Geologists, geophysicists and geochemists locate the materials. Then mining […]

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Saturday 7th July The first lecture of the day was actually a problem solving activity with Professor Martin Freer. When we teachers are teaching A level physics we are so wrapped up in getting the syllabus finished that we don’t have much time for getting the students to think more deeply about the physics they […]

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Friday 6th July The third lecture was given by Jim Woodfin of Queen Mary, University of London. The lecture was called Electrical conduction (the full story). Whatever school year you are in you will learn something about electricity and your teacher will use models to help you learn. The problem is that none of the […]

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Friday 6th July The second lecture was entitled Space, Science and SOHO given By Anu Ojha, who is director of the National Space Centre. He began by asking, where does space begin? The answer is we don’t actually know although the most commonly accepted boundary is about 100km above the Earth’s mean sea level. Why […]

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Friday 6th July The first lecture of the day was given by Dr Christina Lazzeroni on cloud chambers. Dr Lazzeroni started her lecture by setting up a cloud chamber which used a fish tank and low sodium salt (which is mildly radioactive). Putting dry ice into the insulated base of the bubble chamber. Putting the […]

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The IOP together with the Armourers & Brasiers’ Company and SEPnet put on courses three times a year at different Universities for teachers. The course runs for three days. The aims of the course are: To update knowledge of recent developments in physics To explore new practical activities and resources for use in the classroom […]

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The fourth lecture was about a topic my year 13 students get to know and love: Fields and Potential. Given By Robert Birke. Detecting the electric force between two charged plates. When you are doing KS3 and KS4 physics you learn there are different kinds of force divided up into two groups: Contact (friction, drag, […]

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The third lecture was given by Dr Ben Still on the neutrino and particle physics, Particle physicists try to discover the fundamental elementary particles. Nature’s building blocks can be seen in the standard model. These appeared within a few seconds after the big bang. Note that the Higgs hasn’t been added yet. Theory needs it […]

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