Jonathan Shaw joins us to talk over your suggestions for essential physics kit.
What will the well-dressed physics lab be wearing this year? Jonathan Shaw secured £53,000 of funding to kit out his physics department and asked Thomas and Robin to throw this over to the physics-teaching hive mind, and you did not disappoint! We had some fantastic suggestions, and some surprises.
Power packs or data loggers? An observatory or a coffee machine? Where would you invest if you had budget for kit. The consensus that money would be best spent on a teacher and / or a technician was established early, but Jonathan’s budget is specifically earmarked for physics equipment and so we went through series of suggestions.
We also ran a Twitter poll in preparation for the episode and this is what you said should be number one on Jonathan’s list.
- Powerpacks 57%
- multimeters 16%
- oscilloscope 16%
- other 12%
It’s our last podcast of the year next week, but we’ll be back with season 3 in September… and kicking off with a special physics superstar guest!
LINKS
Wolfson Foundation – the source of most of Jonathan’s grant.
Join in!

Please share ideas or successes – or indeed questions – on our Facebook Page: https://fb.me/physicstp . You can also message us via our website contact form at the.physicsteachingpodcast.com, Twitter @physicstp, email using the address given in the podcast (if we remember), you could even email us an autio file if you are feeling really keen.
Music
- Season 5: Crescents by Ketsa.
- Seasons 3 and 4: Disco Sheik by Podington Bear.
- Seasons 1 and 2: One legged equilibrist polka by Circus Homunculus.
- Occasionally we also use Cantina Rag by Jackson F. Smith.
The music is used under the Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License