Prisms and things

 Investigating Prisms, rainbows, diffraction gratings, electromagnetic spectra and spectrometers. Mixing up the syllabus to make other connections. #iteachphysics

Density

Putting a pin in a piece of wood so the density can be measured. It came out at 0.92 g/cm3 with no wet fingers.
 

Investigating rates of reaction

Looking at the rates of reaction of vinegar and chalk. The hardest problem to solve is how to get a full measuring cylinder of water with no air bubbles. Clingfilm is the answer and works really well.

 

Looking at E/Z isomers

Chair, boat, cis trans, E-Z confuses the students until they get hold of the models and can create the different forms and see that they are different. Doing this quickly is difficult with some system but with the @snatoms it is simplicity itself.

Crushing Chalk

 Looking at rates of reaction, particle size. And the best bit of the experiment was crushing the large bits of chalk and making it into a powder.

Plancks Constant Apparatus

The students were horrified when they worked out the error in using this apparatus at over 50%, so we spent a lot of time getting the errors down to around < 10% and getting some reasonable figures for Plancks constant.

Clinostat

 My new clinostat has arrived so we can now have a go at some tropism experiments, demos and videos. I cam hope to do a series of time lapse videos of the seedlings growing and not bending towards the light.