Physics update course December 2012

Saturday 15th December Trip to Diamond Light Source Facility http://www.diamond.ac.uk/ Robotic planetary exploration – Revealing the mysteries of our Solar System http://www.univ.ox.ac.uk/univ-people/dr-leigh-n-fletcher http://www.atm.ox.ac.uk/user/fletcher/Site/Welcome.html Dr Fletcher is a planetary scientist and Royal Society Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. Dr Fletcher specialises in exploring the formation, dynamics, meteorology and chemistry of planetary atmospheres, for both […]

Physics update course December 2012

Friday 14th December Due to teaching my lovely year 13 students I wasn’t able to attend Friday’s lectures so what I am writing for this section is just a summary of what I missed. Tracking magnetic fields with SQUIDs Dr Samuel Henry Department of Physics University of Oxford http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/users/henry/ http://www2.physics.ox.ac.uk/contacts/people/henry SQUIDs (Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices) […]

Maxwell Society Lecture

The Maxwell Society was established in 1935 by Sir Edward Victor Appleton, Wheatstone Professor of Physics at the University of London, 1924-1936, and was named in honour of the pioneering physicist and King College’s own genius of electromagnetism, James Clerk Maxwell, Professor of Natural Philosophy at King’s College London, between 1860 and 1865. It was […]

Solid State Physics at King’s College London

I hope that the students and staff of Rooks Heath won’t mind me using the blog to do a spot of reminiscing but the good news is that it does involve physics and one of Rooks Heath ex-students occurs in it. After graduating in 1985 I was privileged to spend three years doing research at […]

The History of the Atom by Year 13 Physics Students

Democritus and Aristotle by Sulaxchane Balachanthiran Democritus Democritus was born in Abdera at around 460 BCE (he died around 370 BCE), in Thrace, ancient Greece. Even though he is classified as a philosopher he was more of scientist. He was the first person to formulate an atomic theory and was one of the earliest Greeks […]

Physics and Chocolate by Year 12 Physics Students

‘‘Chocolate Unwrapped’’ Trip Report by Pameer Saeed This report will describe how chocolate companies make chocolate, what conditions are necessary and how these are used in order to produce sweet and delicious chocolates. History of Chocolate When most of us hear the word chocolate, we picture a bar or a box of chocolates. The verb […]

Astronomy by microscope

Institute of Physics lecture Throughout the year the Institute of Physics puts on lectures about different aspects of physics. On the 31st of October the lecture was about meteorites and what they can tell us about how the universe, stars and planets can form. Astronomy by Microscope Professor Monica Grady Department of Physical Sciences at […]

Rooks Heath at “Chocolate Unwrapped”

Physics and Chocolate Believe it or not physics is involved in chocolate production. Without the careful use of temperature and pressure we wouldn’t have the wonderful confectionary that adults and children alike have grown to love. On October 13th year 12 physics students went to the “chocolate unwrapped” exhibition to learn more about the production […]

STEM at Rooks Heath

STEM activity at Rooks Heath College SEMTA (Sector Skills Council for the Advanced Manufacturing and Engineering Sectors) has identified that almost 30,000 highly skilled scientists and engineers are needed every year over the next seven years to ease shortages and replace an ageing work force. See http://semta.org.uk/ STEMNET is an organisation who aims to help […]

Birmingham July 2012

Sunday July 8th The final lecture was entitled, “Recreating the Big Bang with the LHC at CERN” with Dr David Evans. The LHC accelerates particles to 0.99999991 of the speed of light to release the sub-atomic energies. The particles collide in four cathedral sized caverns. The circumference of the LHC is 27km. As well as […]