Another Lockdown Lowdown

Thomas and Robin chew the fat over how they are progressing in the new lockdown. We’ve been thinking about how to backfill gaps in the curriculum, in particular practical work.

We have been making use of YouTube to draw on the generosity of colleagues who have filmed and uploaded videos, for example MissLowePhysics who we’ve linked to below. A huge debt of gratitude to all of you who have uploaded videos. And on that note, don’t forget our friend of the podcast, Lewis Matheson and his physics online channel for GCSE and A-level. You guessed it, see the link below.

Simulations are useful, and we have recently spoken with PhET, but Thomas has also been busy making some useful Excel based practical simulations.

We chat about context too. Robin has set his year 10 students a homework to watch the HBO series Chernobyl as an introduction to why e study radioactivity. He’s also been giving some colour to particle physics with year 13 by showing pictures of how the Stanford Linear Accelerator has evolved over the years and emphasising the narrative of discovery in particle physics over the last 120 years.

Literacy is coming! We will be talking about the importance of written and spoken understanding in physics soon. Until then take care and stay safe.

Links

• LED Planck Constant Spreadsheet
• Radiation and lead thickness Spreadsheet
• Stanford Linear Accelerator
• YouTube radioactivity demo
• Physics online

Join in!

Please share ideas or successes – or indeed questions by messaging us on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/physicstp.bsky.social .  You can also message us via our website contact form on every page of the web site at  the.physicsteachingpodcast.com, or email using the address given in the podcast (if we remember). We are moving away from X but can be found there as @physicstp.

Music

• Season 7: Physics Is Our Business by Miracles of Modern Science.
• Seasons 5 and 6: 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