Using Snatoms to explain solvation

Solvation is one of those very hard topics to understand. We have been using the Snatoms to try and make solvation slightly easier to follow. We can see the idea behind size and how the different molecules can bind to one another. We can show how the shape of the molecules makes a difference. We can then help explain what ligands are and how they make sometimes those really pretty colours.

Terminal Velocity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35Gl4JAgWuk

At over 2m tall this tube filled with water can help work out the terminal velocity of an object as it sinks through water. Using a #PASCO rotary sensory, we dropped a brass weight ( 25g) attached to a piece of string. As the ball fall it turned the motion sensor which in turn recorded the distance travelled, the velocity of the weight and its acceleration.

New Classroom COVID-19 Secure

We can now offer a COVID-19 Secure classroom from private Tuition. It's like a normal classroom.

65 inch Interactive Smart Board

Large Desks, padded seats

Fully distanced.

Hand washing Station.

Access to the classroom is not through the house.

Distanced Next client waiting area.

Measuring Gravity by Free fall

Some of my equipment is very expensive and dedicated to only one job or experiment .Lego EV3 on the other hand can be used with some ingenuity to create many different types of equipment, to record all types of events. Here we are measuring Gravity by free fall and creating this out of Lego can achieve some remarkable results. The time for the drop of 50cm has just over 0.32 of a second giving an estimate of gravity at 9.76 m/s/s. With a bit of programming this is a very decent result and remarkably consistent as well.

Diy Ripple Tank

A quick and simple way of creating you own ripple tank using a plastic lid, a couple of books and a light. Watch the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l-tIvvtCPA

A Level Maths Teaching.

 As well as covering the sciences, we also cover Maths at both GCSE and A Level. Many of our students struggle with some of the harder concepts such as Trig Equations and solving them. This weeks A level Maths lesson dealt with this problem showing approaches to solving these problems without resorting to the answers or begin told this is the way to do this one. Students need to learn these techniques so that they can become better

Glycolysis A level Biology

In today's A level Biology Video we looked at Glycolysis, the Link reaction, The Krebs cycle and Oxidative Phosphorylation. The process of Glycolysis breaks down glucose into 2 3 carbon sugars only producing a small amount of energy. The link reaction does a little more, but the Krebs cycle makes the most energy and this is in all forms of energy chemicals. These are all turned into ATP the energy molecules by the process of oxidative phosphorylation.

Transpiration and the Potometer

Looking at how plants take up water is an essential experiment in Biology. A small piece of plant in this case some water cress is inserted into a tube at the top making a water tight seal. The potometer shown here allows an air bubble to be brought into the apparatus, using a syringe, so that the movement of the bubble can be monitored with time. As the plant transpires, water is sucked up the tube and evaporates from the leaves. By knowing the volume of the capillary tube the amount of water lost be minute can be calculated.

Carbon Nanotubes

Three allotropes of Carbon, Diamond, Graphite and Buckminster Fullerene are known.

There is another, a one slice of graphite (graphene) that is rolled into a tube to make a carbon nanotube called a carbon fibre.

This model was created by me since a manufactured model didn't exist.  I made a sheet of graphene three carbons joined to each other then rolled it up like the real thing. The tube is incredibly strong .

Making Silver crystals

Making small crystals of silver from a solution of  Silver Nitrate and a piece of copper wire

Getting the system setup

First we wrapped the wire around a pencil to make a coil. This creates a larger surface area and produces more silver.

Next the solution 0.1M Silver Nitrate is added to cover the copper coil in a test tube. This is then left in a dark place for an hour or so.

After about an hour the test tube is take of of the dark and here we can see the copper wire has changed colour. The solution has gone a light blue and crystals have formed.

We then place this under the microscope.

and take a few pictures of what we see.

and sure enough some crystals are formed. The longer you leave this the better and bigger the crystals.

Measuring the speed of Sound in a Column

In this experiment I have taken a tuning fork, a hollow tube and a measuring cylinder filled with water. The hollow tube can move up and down creating a length of air in the column above the water. The tuning fork is placed over the column and the column moved up and down until the loudest sound is heard. The length of the tube is a quarter of the wavelength, so we multiply the column  length by 4.

We know that the velocity = frequency x wavelength

So if the column is 19.4cm long then the wavelength is 19.4 x 4 = 77.6

The frequency of the tuning fork is 440Hz

So the velocity = 0.776 x 440 = 341.44 m/s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7yl43Zvy8E

New A Level Courses

This week we launched our A level Topic by Topic Series, covering Maths, Chemistry, Physics and Biology. These are a series of live streamed lessons covering these core subjects. Each week we take a different topic and try to explain it simply using experiments, models and hands on teaching. Join us on Wednesday and Thursday Mornings.

Online 1 to 1 Lesson and Live-streaming

With the UK in lockdown over corvid-19, Schools shut, shops closed and businesses struggling. Therefore I must re-invent myself to survive. Over the last year we have been producing Educational videos over on our YouTube channel which has been growing at a steady rate. With the introduction of new technologies we planned and assessed the possibility of doing online classes but struggling to working out who was going to watch them.

As many of you are aware the UK Government suspended GCSE and A-Levels exams, which came at a surprise for us and caused much calamity due to the fact exams are a Goal/deadline for most of my students. With the year 11's and Year 13's are going to get their predicted grades for the next step in their education means that I've now lost them. However the Year 10's and 12's are stuck because IF they go back in September they've got to cover 4 terms worth of work in 2!

Now some schools are trying to help with lessons happening on Zoom, Microsoft Team Etc., however its more of a board meeting/roundtable kind of lesson which isn't the great the best kind of lesson. We have also move our 1 to 1 lessons to online also using Webex from Cisco, but more importantly we've got a system to actually broadcast real/proper lessons that you would find in a classroom this is done by utilising multiple points of view and an integrated system of technology to allow learning to take place. 

Additionally we're Live-streaming maths and science lessons going through the whole syllabuses topic by topic to help those year 10's who aren't receiving any schooling and we a going to start doing the same for A-Level content to help the year 12's in their time of need. All I can say is that we are band together to make sure that we as a people get back on our feet.

Remember to stay safe, wash your hands. 

Best A Level Calculator

Best for A level Maths and Science For science it is a Periodic table and list of all the Physical constants. It sketches out he graphs for Maths but used in science too. There are many addons ( and games) available for the calculator. These calculator makes short work of the A level Maths and helps too with the science. Although geared at A-Level this calculator works well at GCSE too However - it is one of the few calculators where you really do need to read the manual first.

Using your phone effectively in science

It’s a camera, but better it’s a video camera, and slo-mo at that. Start recording your experiments. Use the phone to make video notes or get an app like Notetalker to record a lesson and all the slides. This makes revision a breeze.

So do you have to write up an experiment? Did the results get messed up? But did you manage to video the experiment - all the equipment is there, how it was setup, what you did, what was said. A photo of the results helps, especially with character recognition and turning results into graphs.

 

The wood and Metal Tube

I have a metal and wood rod. I wrap it with a piece of white paper and then put this into a burner. As I heat the rod one side becomes burnt but the other side ( the metal side) stays uncharred. Why is this?
Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7p-kUshVDk

The Best GCSE Calculator

The features on this make many of the problems much easier to solve.

For calculator papers this the polynomial solving feature alone ( quadratic formula) makes this calculator worth it, but also with the tables, the ratio solver and the simultaneous equation solver makes this calculator a must for GCSE Maths. I know I bought two of them and recommend them to my students.

Casio FX-991EX CLASSWIZ

Ball Bearing in Free fall

A ball bearing being dropped and thrown. taken with a strobe flash. Although the ball bearing on the right is moving towards the right it is falling at the same rate as the ball that is dropped. It doesn't seem obvious but that's science.

Malus Law

Shining a light through two polarising lenses. The first cuts out all the light except in one plane. Rotating the other into a plane at 90 degrees, can wipe out the other. Try looking at a led TV screen (polarised light) with polarising lenses and see what happens as you rotate them.

A Really Sharp Pencil

The most useful item in a student's toolkit is the sharp pencil, long enough to hold and make sure its really sharp. Always have one pencil or better still two. Used lots in Science and Maths too. For graph work a sharp pencil can get an extra mark for those points being accurate, and a sharp pencil improves the line. A good rubber (not one on the end of a pencil) makes the mistakes easier to change.

A tall order "hiding a light under a bushel" and do a fun chemistry experiment about that. But we managed to put the fire under the bushel out with a homemade fire extinguisher

Alcohols to Acids

Butanoic Acid is made from heating butan-1-ol with Acidified Potassium dichromate and refluxing for 30 minutes of so. The potassium Dichromate changes from orange to green as it is reduced and the alcohol is oxidised. After the reaction is complete then the apparatus is changed and set up as in the photograph to allow the butanoic acid to be distilled off from the mixture leaving the chromate behind and the butanoic acid is collected in the conical flask.

Maths Tools, Whats needed

A good compass, with a built in pencil. It needs to be firm not loose.
360 degree protractor for doing bearings
A 30cm ruler with a slot in the middle for doing best fit lines
A bendy line for drawing curves
An irish compass very accurate for drawing circles with two pencils
Isosketch for drawing those plans and elevations
A good pencil sharpener