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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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A Couple More Nuggets
Thomas doesn’t know which week it is; thinking there is one more week of term he drags Robin to his garage to test some vacuum cannon upgrades. Thomas and Robin also look backwards and forwards though the podcast’s second season. A Tight Collar Thomas has been experimenting with the collars that are used to join vacuum cannon spec pipes. After initial excitement (described in the podcast) Thomas does some further testing (described in an addendum) and finds that they don’t seal perfectly when pushed on dry and that the hole in the middle is slightly smaller than a table tenis ball (which probably doesn’t matter). The collars can be cut in to slices to make round flanges with three benefits: – Greater surface area for the tape to grip – The potential for “reloading” the tape off-line whilst another shot is prepared (one of the issues with the cannon is the pfaff of taping it up in the lesson – Easier reloading when you forget the ball! The slices can also be used as a mechanical support for the “gold standard” flange – if you have managed to persuade tech. to make you them. Thank you. It’s Been… Emotional There are so many people to thank. We would not do this without *you* dear listener. The emails we get cheer us up and keep us going. We have had so many guests; thank you to you for giving up your time and being so flexible. (Special mention here to Miss Neutrino who happily rerecorded the podcast after Thomas didn’t press the right button). Thanks to Patrick Kaplo, who has become a good friend and who we were very disappointed not to meet face to face this Spring. Finally, thanks to our families, who think we are bonkers but wave us off to our respective cupboard and garage each week.
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Spend spend spend!
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.
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Sharing Is Caring
Peter is one of those special people who is a finisher. Dissatisfied with the resources available to him in his trainee year, Peter set about creating his own resources. Not only that, he shared them through his web site, sciencedoctor.school.blog. His one problem with all this #sharingiscaring? The endless requests for the answers. If you use the resources and there are no answers, then please send them to him. Thomas says he will put a link to Peter’s site on the resources aggregator we host, https://resources.physicsteachingpodcast.com. Peter also suggests ways of spending Jonathan Shaw’s £50,000 on Physics equipment – his ideal would be to spend £10,000 on one big ticket item. Thomas is skeptical, Robin delighted. Finally, Peter’s Practical in Memoriam is a beautiful way of making one of the less inspiring practicals (density) more appealing.