The Myth of Multitasking: Attention, Focus, and Memory in the Modern Brain 

Students often claim they can revise while watching Netflix, messaging friends, and listening to music. But neuroscience tells us otherwise: multitasking is largely a myth.

🔄 Task-Switching, Not Multitasking

What the brain actually does is switch rapidly between tasks. Each switch carries a cost — a small delay, a drop in accuracy, or a forgotten detail. Over time, these costs add up, making multitasking less efficient than doing one thing at a time.

🧩 Effects on Learning and Memory

For students, multitasking while studying can mean:

• Weaker memory encoding (the brain doesn’t store information deeply).

• More mistakes (especially in maths or problem-solving tasks).

• Longer study times (because distractions reset focus).

🎧 But What About Music?

Background music without lyrics can sometimes help focus, but music with words competes with the language centres of the brain. That’s why singing along rarely improves revision notes!

🎓 The Better Strategy

We encourage students to use focused work sessions (25–30 minutes of total attention), followed by short breaks. This method boosts both concentration and long-term recall.

By busting the myth of multitasking, students learn that their brain is not a computer running many apps — it’s more like one processor, best used on one task at a time.

Is Juggling Good for Memory and Learning?

The statement has a kernel of truth: short breaks that use different parts of the brain can improve focus and memory recall.

✅ What’s valid:

• Breaks matter: Research shows the brain consolidates information during short rests. Even a few minutes away from the task can boost retention.

• Physical activity helps: Light exercise, such as juggling, increases blood flow and oxygen to the brain, which can improve alertness.

• Different brain regions: Juggling is a motor skill involving coordination, balance, and visual tracking — so it engages different neural circuits than reading or solving equations.

⚠️ What’s less certain:

• Saying juggling directly improves memory recall is an overstatement. The benefit is more indirect — it refreshes the brain and creates a mental reset, which can make the next study block more effective.

• Any activity that contrasts with intense study (walking, stretching, mindfulness, even doodling) could provide a similar reset. Juggling isn’t unique, just fun and engaging.

How to Give the Brain Time to Consolidate When Learning

When you study, your brain encodes information in short-term memory. But to make it stick in long-term memory, it needs time to consolidate — strengthening neural connections, often in the background.

Here are some proven strategies:

✅ Use spaced practice
Instead of cramming, break revision into smaller sessions spread over days. This spacing gives the brain repeated chances to revisit and reinforce the material.

✅ Take short breaks
After 20–30 minutes of focused study, pause for 5 minutes. Do something different — stretch, walk, doodle, juggle — anything that rests the same circuits you were just using.

✅ Sleep on it
Sleep is the brain’s consolidation powerhouse. During deep sleep, the hippocampus “replays” recent learning, helping it transfer into long-term storage. That’s why revising the night before and getting a good night’s sleep works better than an all-nighter.

✅ Mix active recall with rest
Test yourself (flashcards, past paper questions), then step away. The struggle to retrieve information strengthens memory, and the break afterwards lets the brain embed it.

✅ Change context
Switching where or how you learn (different room, different activity, teaching the material to someone else) gives your brain multiple pathways to the same information, making recall easier.

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💡 Simple rule for students: Study hard in short bursts, rest often, sleep well. That’s how you give the brain space to consolidate and turn effort into lasting knowledge.

 

Cryptography in the Classroom: Introducing Simple Ciphers and Codebreaking 

Codes and secret messages always grab students’ attention. From Roman generals to modern computer security, cryptography has shaped history — and it makes a brilliant way to link maths, logic, and problem-solving in class.

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✉️ Starting Simple – Caesar Ciphers

We begin with the classic Caesar cipher, shifting each letter of the alphabet by a fixed number. A shift of 3 turns A→D, B→E, and so on. Students can quickly write secret notes — and then try to crack them by looking for patterns, like how often letters such as “E” appear.

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🔄 Substitution and Beyond

Next, we move to substitution ciphers, where each letter is swapped for a different symbol or letter. Students discover how much harder these are to break without frequency analysis. Some groups invent their own codes and challenge their classmates to solve them.

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✍️ Creating Your Own Cipher

Once students understand the basics, the real fun begins: designing their own cipher. They might combine symbols with numbers, add “dummy letters” to confuse codebreakers, or even mix methods (a Caesar shift and a substitution).

This creative task sparks plenty of competition — whose code is the hardest to crack? And can anyone break it without clues?

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⚙️ From the Classroom to Enigma

This is where history comes alive. The Enigma machine, used by Germany in WWII, was essentially a substitution cipher taken to the extreme. With its multiple rotors, plugboard, and daily key changes, it could generate trillions of possible combinations.

Breaking Enigma at Bletchley Park required not just pattern spotting but early computers, brilliant logic, and a lot of teamwork. Students often realise their own “unbreakable” ciphers might not be so secure after all.

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💻 Modern Encryption – Next Level Complexity

Today’s digital encryption builds on the same principles but is vastly more complex. Algorithms such as RSA and AES use huge prime numbers, modular arithmetic, and key exchanges that would take even the fastest supercomputers billions of years to brute-force.

Where a Caesar cipher can be cracked with pencil and paper, modern codes are what keep your online banking, WhatsApp chats, and medical records safe.

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🎓 Why It Works in Teaching

Cryptography lessons combine:

• Maths (patterns, modular arithmetic, probability).

• History (from Julius Caesar to Alan Turing).

• Teamwork (students love creating and cracking each other’s codes).

It’s a perfect way to show that maths isn’t just about numbers on a page — it’s about puzzles, logic, creativity, and the security of the digital world we live in.

 

Fractional Distillation of Synthetic Crude Oil – Chemistry in Action 

Crude oil is one of the most important mixtures in our lives. From petrol in cars to plastics in everyday objects, it all begins with the process of fractional distillation. But bringing barrels of real crude oil into the classroom isn’t practical (or safe!) – so we use a synthetic version instead.

🛠 The Setup

We create a mixture of hydrocarbons with different boiling points to mimic crude oil. This synthetic crude is poured into a distillation flask, heated gently, and the vapours rise up the fractionating column.

As the vapour travels, it cools. Substances with lower boiling points rise further, while those with higher boiling points condense earlier and fall back. By adjusting the temperature, students can collect each fraction in turn.

🔬 What Students Learn

• Separation by boiling point – why methane and petrol fractions come off first, while bitumen stays behind.

• Energy content – lighter fractions burn more cleanly, heavier ones produce more soot.

• Real-life uses – from gas for heating, to petrol and diesel for transport, to lubricating oils and waxes.

🎓 Why It Works in Teaching

Using a synthetic crude makes the process safe, visual, and hands-on. Students see liquid fractions being collected and link them directly to the fuels and materials they use every day.

It turns a complicated industrial process into something tangible, memorable, and surprisingly fun – and it gives them a real appreciation for how vital chemistry is to modern life.

 

Measuring Lift with an Airfoil – The Physics of Flight 

Why does a plane stay in the air? Students often know “it’s lift,” but not what lift is or how to measure it. That’s where our PASCO sensors make physics take off.

Introduction

Take a sheet of paper and place it under your bottom lip and blow. The paper will move from being limp to pointing horizontally. Lets investigate why.

🛠 The Setup

We use a small airfoil model mounted on a retort stand with a large fan in front of it suspended by a PASCO force sensor. By controlling the airflow speed and angle of attack, students can record real-time force measurements as the wing interacts with the moving air.

📊 The Science

As the air flows faster over the curved top surface of the wing than under it, a pressure difference develops. According to Bernoulli’s principle, this creates lift. But it’s not just theory – the sensors show the numbers live on screen.

Students can:

• Plot lift vs angle of attack to see how too steep an angle stalls the wing.

• Compare lift at different airspeeds and discover why planes need long runways.

• Calculate the lift coefficient (Cl) from their data, just like real aeronautical engineers.

🎓 Why It Works in Teaching

The beauty of PASCO’s system is that the data is immediate, accurate, and student-led. Instead of being told “wings create lift,” students watch the graphs build in front of them. They see how lift grows, peaks, and eventually falls away when the wing stalls.

It transforms a textbook diagram into a live experiment where students discover the physics of flight for themselves.

And the best bit? When they next get on a plane, they’ll know the maths and science that are keeping them in the sky.

 

Compound Interest, APR and Loans – Making Financial Maths Real

Ask any GCSE or A-Level Maths student what they’ll use maths for in the real world, and “compound interest” is usually top of the list. Whether it’s savings, loans, or credit cards, understanding how percentages build up over time is an essential life skill.

💷 Simple vs Compound Interest

• Simple interest is just adding the same amount each year.
  £100 at 5% simple interest for 3 years = £115.

• Compound interest is interest on interest.
  £100 at 5% compound interest for 3 years = £115.76.
  It doesn’t look much at first, but over decades the difference is huge.

What is APR and How Does It Work?

APR stands for Annual Percentage Rate – the true yearly cost of borrowing money. Unlike a simple “interest rate,” APR also includes extra charges such as fees, so it gives a fairer picture of what you’ll actually pay.

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💷 A Simple Example

Imagine you borrow £1,000 at 10% simple annual interest:

• After 1 year, you repay £1,100.

• That’s straightforward – interest is £100.

But most loans and credit cards don’t work that simply. They often charge interest monthly or even daily. That’s where APR helps us compare.

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📈 APR with Monthly Interest

Say a credit card charges 1.5% interest per month.
That sounds small – but watch what happens:

• After 1 month: £1,000 → £1,015

• After 12 months: £1,000 grows to about £1,195
  That’s nearly 20% extra in a year, not just 12 × 1.5% = 18%.
  This effect of interest on interest is called compounding.

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⚖ Why APR Matters

APR turns all this into one yearly percentage figure, so you can compare deals fairly.

• A personal loan might have an APR of 6%.

• A credit card might have an APR of 19.9%.

• A payday loan might quote “only 1% per day” – but that works out at over 3,600% APR!

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🎓 Teaching Tip

We use APR in class to show students:

• How a loan can cost far more than its headline rate suggests.

• Why repaying only the “minimum payment” on a credit card keeps debt hanging around for years.

• And why “0% interest” deals are worth double-checking for hidden fees.

APR takes the mystery out of borrowing and turns it into maths students can calculate, compare, and understand.

🏦 Loans and Repayments

Loans use the same maths but in reverse. Borrow £5,000 at 6% over 3 years, and you’ll pay back more than £5,000 – sometimes a lot more depending on the terms. Students are often shocked when they calculate how much that “cheap loan” actually costs over its lifetime.

🎓 Why We Teach It This Way

We use real examples:

• comparing two savings accounts,

• working out the total cost of a loan,

• or even checking how long it takes a credit card debt to vanish if you only pay the minimum.

It turns financial maths from abstract percentages into real decisions they (and their parents!) will one day face. And once students have run the numbers themselves, they’ll never look at an “interest-free” deal the same way again.

 

Lenz’s Law in Action: Induction Demonstrations for A-Level Physics

Lenz’s Law can feel abstract when students first meet it. The idea that “the induced current opposes the change that caused it” is a mouthful – but when you see it in action, it suddenly makes sense.

That’s why in our lab, we turn the law into a series of hands-on demonstrations:

🧲 The Falling Magnet in a Tube

Drop a magnet down a copper or aluminium tube and – instead of clattering out the bottom – it drifts slowly. The induced currents in the tube set up magnetic fields that oppose the falling magnet, creating a perfect, visible example of Lenz’s Law.

🔄 The Jumping Ring

Place a conducting ring on top of a solenoid, switch on the alternating current, and the ring leaps into the air. The changing magnetic flux induces a current in the ring, which creates its own magnetic field opposing the original – and off it goes.

⚡ Eddy Currents and Damped Motion

Swing a thick metal plate between the poles of a magnet and watch as it grinds to a halt. The eddy currents induced in the plate oppose the motion, converting kinetic energy into heat. Swap it for a slotted plate, and the effect nearly disappears – a brilliant visual contrast.

💡 Linking the Theory

Every demo highlights the same principle: the induced current always acts to oppose the change in flux. Whether slowing a fall, throwing a ring, or damping motion, Lenz’s Law ensures energy is conserved and systems resist sudden changes.

For students, seeing the law “fight back” in these dramatic ways makes induction far more than an equation in a textbook – it becomes a memorable, almost magical, part of physics.

 

The Digestive System – A Journey Through Our Knitted Guts

Let’s be honest – the digestive system is not the nicest thing to teach. The very thought of what goes on inside our guts is enough to make most students squirm. That’s why we have our knitted gut.

It’s life-size, soft, pleasant to touch, and best of all, it gives students a real sense of scale. I can pull out between 5–6 metres of small intestine from the model, and students can drape it around themselves to see just how much of it there is and where it all goes.

The journey starts with the tongue.
Students always protest: “My tongue isn’t that big!” Then they see the stomach and say: “My stomach isn’t that small!” – until I explain that, although small, it can expand to hold quite a bit.

Next, the students measure the liver. It’s surprisingly large, stretching right across the body. Nestled alongside is the pancreas, both of which are crucial to digestion.

• The liver does one job for digestion: it produces bile, which is carried by the bile duct.

• The stomach has two jobs: it produces pepsin (released first as pepsinogen) to start protein digestion, and it produces acid to kill off bacteria.

• The pancreas is a multitasker: it produces three enzymes – lipase to break down fats, carbohydrase for carbohydrates, and trypsin (made first as trypsinogen) to continue protein digestion.

From there, everything moves into the small intestine, with its villi to absorb nutrients, past the appendix, and into the large intestine, where water is absorbed. Finally, it travels through the rectum and out of the anus – cue the usual giggles.

The knitted gut turns what might be a repulsive topic into something students can see, touch, and laugh about – while still learning how remarkable their bodies really are.