Season 3 Finale!

Well, we made it. What. A. Year. Robin and Thomas hook up with Patrick Kaplo to hear about how he has been getting on in the North Eastern USA and, as usual, get somewhat distracted. Thomas nobly tries to steer the whimsical chat towards physics teaching with limited success.

Patrick had to cancel his extraordinary trebuchet competition because of the pandemic (see video below) and has also been suffering under incredible heat. This leads to him crushing another of Thomas’ stereotypes about the USA and for Thomas to explain how he used his Physics teaching knowledge to save some money by investing in an inverter.

Thomas thanks David Cotton (@newmanphysics on twitter) for a gift he sent of a vintage textbook of practicals and a tiny triple LED light demonstrator.

We drift in to chatting about how relevant our Physics specs are to everyday life. Thomas asserts that he only used his knowledge of a vernier scale but Patrick quicly points out all the other ways. Robin is adamant (look away now CLEAPPS) that a basic knowledge of electricity is enough to do DIY electricity*.

We then talk about the difficult year and Thomas reflects on his failures with Year 7 – making the same mistakes he made in his first years of teaching. We talk about what we are going to take forward from the pandemic and really hope that CPD will be better! No more drawing a “perfect teacher” or “perfect student”…

Patrick and Robin both have a new start next year and Thomas is expecting a huge uptick in students at A-Level. We talk through the changes we’ll face. If you teach a huge class of A-Level students PLEASE get in touch and come on the podcast to tell us your strategies. Patrick has itchy feet and wants to avoid James de Winter’s “velvet lined rut”.

Finally some thank yous, Thank you to everyone who has listened, we couldn’t do it without your support and kind words. Thank you to all the guests; so many wonderful people who have freely given their time. Thank you to Robin for being the brains of the operation, bringing some credibility and always doing the show notes (and nearly always on time). This is my least favourite task but I have muddled through ~ Thomas

+And thank you Thomas for all the heavy lifting ~ Robin

*in the UK all DIY electrical work should be checked by a qualified electrician ?.

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