Measuring the River Flow

Measuring the river flow rate in  The River Gade. This involved a little wading. The water was at 8.9C Now to build up a cross-sectional flow map of the River to explain the distribution of organisms.

 

Iodine in water and cyclohexane

 

First, Iodine was dissolved in water and a little dissolved, changing the colour, but much of the iodine remained solid. Then it was shaken with cyclohexane, and immediately, the water layer went clear as the iodine dissolved in the cyclohexane. After a while, more iodine dissolved in the water, turning it brown again.

Protecting the sensor

 We are doing some Simple Harmonic Motion experiments online with springs and masses over the @pascoscientific Ultrasonic sensor, so we are trying to keep it safe.

Differentiation from First Principles

 Trying to understand differentiation from first principles is one of the hardest things to learn. Giving the students these proofs and then letting them do one on their own shows whether they have grasped the concept.

Calculation of Wavelength

Physics practical working out the wavelength of a laser going through a diffraction grating of 100 lines per mm. Managed to get 667nm, which was pretty close.

 

Camera Quadrat

Fieldwork using the camera 1m Quadrat or using a .5m quadrat and taking a photo. Both were a very quick way of scanning the field and then using the computer in the classroom to analyse the photos and record the numbers of plant species.

 

Building a Raspberry Pi Server

 The students gain considerable computing experience, given a Raspberry Pi computer, installing all the software and setting up a functioning LAMP web server. Some used PHP, and others tried Django to go with their Python skills.