The Physics Teaching Podcast

Tag: practical

  • Ramps and Trolleys

    Ramps and Trolleys

    Welcome back for another year of Physics Teaching ramblings. It has been a momentous Summer with Thomas cycling off into the mountains for his sabbatical, Robin becoming ever more important in his new school and the arrival on board of the new co-host Rosie McTavish. Robin and Thomas visited Rosie at McTavish Towers to deliver her vacuum cannon and think about the year ahead. We forgot to take a photo though. We have new theme music – it is called Physics Is Our Business by Miracles of Modern Science

    The new season starts without Robin who is up to his eyeballs in management stuff – though he has recorded an interview that will be the backbone of Episode 2. Rosie and Thomas reminisce about their summers and Thomas asks the dear listeners if they have any favourite “must see” youtube videos they would like us to share.  Then on to the meat of the podcast – taking the podcast back to its roots: supporting the heroic non-specialists who take on this magnificent subject.

    If someone is teaching a required GCSE practical or PAG and need advice, what would you say to them in that 10 minute chat at break? This episode we selected good old Ramps and Trolleys. What can you do, what should you record and how can you use the data?

    Thomas thinks it will be large groups so is keen to give specific roles for the experiment and Rosie likes to measure the speed of the trolley once it has left the ramp. We both love light gates and think they are worth the time to learn how to use them for the excellent data they can provide. Good questions to ask are if you double the height do you double the speed (no) or halve the time to descend the ramp (yes) – these can give more of a focus to the lesson rather than just gathering data.

    Inevitably we want to draw a graph and Rosie reminds Thomas about scale selectors – little strips that allow the students to line up with the bottom of their graph paper and work out which scale is best.

    Do share your favourite youtube videos – there is a contact form on every page of the web site – the.physicsteachingpodcast.com, or email us contact at thephysicsteachingpodcast dot com or on X – @physicstp or BlueSky @physicstp.bsky.social.

    Scale Selectors
    More scale selectors

    Links

    Youtube on straws in to a pumpkin aka Deadly Straw bullets – thanks to Gian Ascone.

    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

    The music is used under the Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License

  • CanSat

    CanSat

    The science department often wistfully watch the MFL mob heading off for glamorous trips to Paris, Berlin or Barcelona, plaintively sighing over the challenges of finding exciting ways to boost their students’ passion, when all languages has to do is to head South and feed them their bodyweight in croissants (other nationally stereotypical carbohydrates are available). I mean, sure we’ve got CERN, but it’s been going a while, and breathing in Switzerland costs more than 20 Ryanair tickets to Nantes.

    So there was genuine excitement in the (TP)2 office* when we heard from Rosie McTavish. A true hero of physics Rosie’s been running the exciting CanSat initiative at her school, heroically stoking interest in rocket science… and not a Berliner in sight (it’s a German donut… no really, look it up, I promise). Who wouldn’t want to fire a bean can 400m in to the air and then try to get telemetry from it?! Well lots of people probably, but they won’t be listening to this podcast.

    *local takeaway.

    … and if all this is a bit too exciting for you, why not grapple with the difference between stiff, hard, tough and brittle while a roomful of 17 year olds desperately fail to repress their sniggering? Yes, Robin’s happy to be teaching Materials again and measuring Young’s modulus next week. He’s planning to bribe them with churros (they’re Spanish don… never mind).

    A video of Rosie’s grand day out:

    Links

    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

    The music is used under the Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License

  • From Darkest Peru

    From Darkest Peru

    WARNING: the following content contains numerous cheap references to Paddington Bear – see links.

    Matt Bowman

    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 (presumably bearing a label saying “Please look after this physics teacher”). Fast forward two years and we have finally managed to organise a chat with the fabulous Matt Bowman.

    Matt kindly shares his thoughts on working abroad, with numerous tips and inside observations. If you are thinking of a spell working overseas, Matt’s advice is absolutely essential so have a listen and be inspired! Links to the plum international physics teaching jobs from TES, below.

    Thomas was about to fix Matt with a particularly hard star over his attitude to practical work, but Matt is very pro-experimental work, just purposeful experimental work. Matt challenges us to target our planning at what knowledge or skills we want our students to leave the lab with after each practical. Do we really need to practise graph-drawing this time; is the design of the results table core to the objectives of this particular investigation? It’s an interesting point of view and Matt makes a good case. Thomas and Matt are still friends, now that we have cleared up that Matt is actually a big fan of experimental work…

    Matt’s Practical in Memoriam is measuring the speed of light with cheese (no, really)

    Links

    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

    The music is used under the Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License

  • Finding Physics Teaching at Fifty-Three

    Finding Physics Teaching at Fifty-Three

    Thomas, Robin and Patrick Kaplo hear from Jonathan Shaw, a late career change to Physics teaching who is in his NQT year at 53 years old. Jonathan also challenges the team to select the most important equipment for a new physics department.

    Timestamps

    • Vacuum cannon update @ 00:39
    • Ways to teach… Waves reminder @ 01:04
    • Physics in the News: Coal Free Electricity in the UK @ 02:39
    • Energy storage with cars @ 03:56
    • Jonathan Shaw, NQT @ 04:47
    • After the interview discussion @ 20:40
      • Swiss Roll @ 20:44
    • Which equipment should a Physics department have? @ 29:35

    Summary

    Thomas reminds us that the Vacuum Cannon can once more be ordered in the shop (for delivery in early June). Physics In The News leads to a chat about the UK’s coal-free week and the idea of load balancing with electric cars. This week’s guest is Jonathan Shaw, a successful businessman and entrepreneur who found his true calling as a Physics teacher late in life. What he says challenges Patrick, Thomas and Robin to justify practical work and also to come up with the equipment that a Physics department should have if starting from scratch. Robin gives his top tips for teaching other teachers to use oscilloscopes but is sceptical about a virtual oscilloscope but Thomas recommends the one at academo.org. Share your list with @physicstp on twitter with the hash tag #tptpequipment.

    Ways to teach… Waves

    Episode 27 will be all about ways to teach Waves. How do you do it and what works best for you? You have until Saturday night to give us your ideas, and one of them will win Alom Shaha’s excellent book Recipes for Wonder.

    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) or by leaving a voice memo using WhatsApp or Telegram to the phone number in our Twitter profile, +44 7898 814716 (don’t call the number, nobody will answer, just hold down the microphone icon and speak your message). Don’t forget to tell us your name because we may use your audio in a future episode. Please do leave a voice memo: Thomas thinks nobody loves him.

    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

    The music is used under the Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License

  • Squeezing it all in + pondering momentum ?

    This week’s episode was a bumper edition, and we had to work hard to keep it down to just under 27 minutes. I really wanted to put in the Practicals In Memoriam (PIM) section and this led to cutting down the interview. Robin and I have talked a few times about the ideal length for the episodes, and hit on 20 minutes as short enough for a commute, and short enough to listen to a few on the bounce when you find the podcast.

    As our production skills improve longer ones are easier to do and each podcast has been longer than the previous, but I think we will aim to keep them short. On reflection we felt that this Episode 5 was rather “busy” and maybe we should have kept back the PIM for another day. It deserved a whole podcast of its own maybe.  But when you are aiming to hit a deadline you have to make a decision and run with it. We were still tossing it back and forth on Wednesday night.

    Pine nut shooters (straws)

    In other news I asked Robin if he had any ideas for a class practical that could explore momentum. I wheel out the air track every year, but it is not very inspiring. He came up with pea shooters and impulse (Ft). I would really like to do something quantitative so my idea from this is you propel the pea (in my case pine nut) as hard as you can and see how far it goes as you reduce the length of the straw.  Assuming that the force is constant whilst the nut is in the straw, then the acceleration will be too and the time in the straw will be proportional to the square root of its length (suvat). The impulse is the change in momentum, so the velocity will also be proportional to the square root of the straws length and the distance the nut travels will be too. That’s my theory, but it seems over-complicated and could be done with suvat without any reference to impulse at all!  I am still humming and hahing about whether to use it.

    An alternative would be Stuart’s practical, rolling balls down the slope in to cups. From suvat I can get the students to show that velocity is proportional to square root of the distance up the ruler. But where do I go from there? Pre-schoolers could tell you the cups will go further if the ball rolls faster. If I keep the velocity the same then heavier cups don’t go as far, but again, there is no obvious momentum related quantitative results I can gather. I did use Stuart’s experiment at Open Evening yesterday. IT worked well until the volunteers got excited about monkey-hunter!

    I think I will be rolling out the air-track and doing the pea shooters qualitatively. ?