Recent Posts

  • Ranking Tasks and Resources

    What are ranking questions and why do they matter? James de Winter pops by to tell us. What do we do about resource curation? Could you be the answer?

  • Long Answers (free response questions)

    How great to reach out across the pond and catch up again with Patrick Kaplo (an early hero of the podcast who teaches in Windham, NH). He has been hunkering down and adapting to new paradigms, and it is refreshing to hear that the problems we are all dealing with are pretty similar, no matter where you are in the world.

  • PhET

    Thomas and Robin meet outside, at an appropriate social distance, to remember Tim Hardingham and introduce an interview with the PhET Head of Development Ariel Paul (@DrArielPaul). Surely all physics teachers have heard of this outstanding free source of simulations and demos provided by the University of Colorado Boulder.

  • Blog

    Mourning The Rev

    There will be no podcast today as a mark of respect for Robin’s and Thomas’ dear friend The Reverend Tim Hardingham who was tragically killed whilst riding his bike with […]

  • A-Level RP: Specific Heat Capacity

    Robin and Thomas are joined by Rajani Nair (@NairPhysics), (who before answering our tweet had not heard of the podcast) and who shares her ideas about teaching Specific Heat Capacity at A-Level. She also has a wonderful memorable practical which involves throwing eggs. We are then joined by James de Winter in a (hopefully) regular slot "Dispatches with de Winter" where he talks about the book 5 Easy Lessons.

  • IoP Domains

    The Nobel Prize is still the ultimate accolade and viewed with envy by the fields that don't have a Nobel Prize (in your face, maths!). This week we start by congratulating the three winners of the 2020 physics prize: Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel, and Andrea Ghez, before talking to FoTP, Carole Kenrick about Domains and Zines.

  • Ways To Teach… Under Covid Restrictions

    Thank you so much for making such a great job of teaching with the Covid restrictions! Given the circumstances, schools have done an extraordinary job, and this episode shows how teachers will always find a silver lining. We get a raft of ideas from folk turning the situation to their advantage; for example using visualisers to zero in on the crucial points of practicals, using OneNote to 'write' equations for you... we could go on.

  • From Darkest Peru

    Way back at the beginning of series one we were thrilled to hear from an international school teacher named Matt who had just landed in Lima. Fast forward two years and we have finally managed to organise a chat with the fabulous Matt Bowman.

  • James de Winter is Electric

    Season 3 continues to deliver physics royalty as James de Winter joins us. James is the physics tutor on the Cambridge PGCE course and has seen generations of physics teachers through their training. Having met a fair sample I can say that all of them hold James in the sort of reverence that Luke reserved for Obi Wan.

  • First Thoughts on Covid “Secure” Teaching

    Robin and Thomas reflect on a first week back under the new covid guidelines and find time to talk through a simple required practical - timing a trolley rolling down a ramp.