The Lives and Times of Pioneering Women in Physics

I was very privileged to be in the audience for this celebration of women in physics. As a teacher I have often heard the comment that “physics is a boy’s subject isn’t it”. Well this celebration shows it is just as much a girl’s subject as boys. You can read the Institute of physics own […]

Visiting the spiders

The EDEXCEL AS physics syllabus requires the AS physics students to undertake a visit or case study and write a report on the subject before carrying out a related experiment. This year they were asked to research and write about the properties of spider silk. You may be surprised but there is a connection with […]

Particle Physics Masterclass 2015

Applications of Particle Accelerators By Prof. Rob Edgecock, STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory Proof-of-principle: cheapest option! Electron acceleration: 10 to 20 MeV Built in DL EMMA Accelerator at Daresbury Laboratory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMMA_%28accelerator%29 The Electron Machine with Many Applications (EMMA) is a project at Daresbury Laboratory in the UK to build a linear non-scaling FFAG to accelerate electrons […]

Particle Physics Masterclass 2015

Computer Workshop http://atlas.physicsmasterclasses.org/en/wpath_teilchenid2.htm http://www.ep.ph.bham.ac.uk/twiki/bin/view/General/MinervaResources http://atlas-minerva.web.cern.ch/atlas-minerva/ Minerva is a Masterclass tool allowing students to learn more about the physics that goes on in the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Currently, Minerva has two scenarios. One a tried and tested, well established exercise, where students must analyse events, using information from all parts of the detector to […]

Particle Physics Masterclass 2015

The Large Hadron Collider By Dr Kristian Harder The status of particle physics The standard model is an excellent description of the universe; many phenomena can be predicted with unprecedented precision, it has defied all attempts to find flaws in it for decades, however it has just two problems. a) It is incomplete. It doesn’t […]

Particle Physics Masterclass 2015

Introduction to ISIS By Dr Chris Frost The image below shows some of the physicists who pioneered the research that allowed ISIS to be developed and used. The Quantum Scale Neils Bohr and Albert Einstein were not altogether happy with what they were finding out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Bohr Niels Henrik David Bohr (7 October 1885 – 18 […]

Particle Physics Masterclass 2015

Fundamentals of Particle Physics By Dr. Emmanuel Olaiya Our Universe is 15 billion years old It contains about 150 billion galaxies Each galaxy has around 300 billion stars This means there is a huge amount of matter containing an unimaginable amount of particles How do we even begin to understand all of matter? How many […]

Particle Physics Masterclass 2015

Once again Year 13 Rooks Heath Physics students were lucky enough to attend the Particle Physics Masterclass at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Harwell Campus, Didcot https://www.stfc.ac.uk/76.aspx http://harwellcampus.com/ The first activity of the day was a lecture entitled “A very brief guide to accelerators” A very brief guide to accelerators By Dr. Tom Williams We have […]

The Electromagnetic Spectrum by Year 12 Physics Students

Gamma Waves By Kishok Inderaraj 12G Gamma radiation, also known as gamma rays, and denoted by the Greek letter γ, refers to electromagnetic radiation of an extremely high frequency and is therefore made up of high-energy photons. Gamma rays are ionizing radiation, and are thus biologically hazardous. They are classically produced by the decay of […]

The Electromagnetic Spectrum by Year 12

X- Rays by Sambathkumar Uruthirakumar 12G Brief description X-rays are electromagnetic waves which have a very high frequency but a short wave length. They have wavelengths ranging from 0.01 to 10 nanometres with corresponding frequencies in the range 30 petahertz to 30 exahertz (3 × E16 Hz to 3 × E19 Hz) and energies in […]