Mesh Networks

 Investigating Mesh Networks. How do they work? Where to position them for the best WiFi. Selecting the best channels for WiFi reception. Setting up effective routing to access all the devices on a network regardless of the OS. Some fun playing with Wireless Networks.

Alkali Metals

Watching how fast Sodium oxidises in the air before comparing its reactivity to Lithium and Potassium in water. A really great, fun experiment.

 

Chemistry - Fuel Cells

 This is still the future - fuel cells. Charged by Solar to split water. The hydrogen and oxygen combine at a later time to create water again and electricity. This cell will do both the splitting and the recombining.

Hookes Law Series and Parallel

 Back to work looking at Hookes Law with series and Parallel springs and predicting what happens and then trying out experiments to see if the experiments prove the predictions.

Survived Christmas

 The proper use of a NO2 cylinder making whipped cream for a vanilla slice - part of Surviving Christmas 2023

Analog Computing

 Time to set up and play with a few more demos of using Analog Computing @analogparadigm to demonstrate what it can do and achieve.

Last Day of Teaching before Christmas

 Last day of Teaching until after Christmas. I can manage to squeeze in a few days off to celebrate Christmas with my family. But before then, it's Chemistry, Maths, Biology, Maths and Computer Science.

Splint flame tests

 Flame tests are always a good way of finishing a term's experiments. There are many ways to do flame tests, but one of the easiest is to use a wooden splint. It's quick, easy, and fun.

Electric fields

A problem for the students having to explain how electricity works by visualising the electric field around a wire and seeing and measuring the magnetic field using the @pascoscientific magnetic field probe. Are the fields the same but just looked at differently?

 

Tree Diagrams

 By far, the best way of teaching tree diagrams is with sweets. After the first round, if you have eaten a green sweet, how many left becomes easier when it is the mouth.

Specific Latent Heat of Vaporisation

Ready to perform the Specific Latent Heat of Vaporisation experiment. The older style immersion heaters were shorter, but my replacement one is too long and doesn't give accurate results.
 

Exploring the Brain

 Exploring the Brain in Year 11 Biology. Trying out some clever brain tricks to see how it works and how easily the Brain can be fooled.

Turing Tumble

 Using the turning Tumble for working out logic operations and solving problems then turning them into computer assembly code.

Lever Arm Balance

 Using a lever arm balance to work out moments - Immediate readout of the correct answer.

Testing for Gases

Testing for gases. A student came to me and asked what were the tests for gases. She had had a school lesson but hadn't done or seen a demo. We tested for oxygen, hydrogen, carbon dioxide and Chlorine. She now knows the tests.

 

Reflective smartcart addon

 Using the @pascoscientific smartcart with a bigger back end improves the results when measuring distances and velocities are greater distances

Matricies

 Working out matrices in Further Maths using a calculator to help with some number crunching.

Lenses and ray diagrams

Learning all about ray diagrams and convex and concave lenses. Relating what we learned about refraction and applying it to the shapes of lenses and measuring their power. The students find it difficult to apply knowledge from one thing to another.

 

The Eye

Understanding how the lens in the eye works is made a bit easier by this @pascoscientific lens; fill it with water and then use the syringe as the muscles to turn the lens from convex to concave. Place in the model eye to observe the results.

 

Floating Point Arithmetric Errors

 Looking at how floating Point Arithmetic errors can mean the difference in life and death as a small error in time can mean the difference between a missile hitting and missing its target. In this case, a Patriot missile, missing the missile it was sent to shoot down.

Alternative energy

Looking at alternative energy sources. Solar power and wind power, but what do we do on an airless night. Investigating Gravity storage. An easy design for the lab.

 

Reversible reactions

Investigating chemical reactions with year 8. Giving the students an opportunity to play with the bunsen burners when looking at heating blue Copper Sulfate and turning it white and then adding water to make it blue again and getting some heat back before repeating the experiment.

 

Heating and cooling dry air

 Heating and cooling dry air using @pascoscientific wireless pressure and temperature sensors to detect the change in temp slow and pressure fast. Quick and easy science experiments with charts to walk away with.

Prep for mocks

Prep for A-level year 2 mocks. Not done differentiation and Integration, so can only do about 1/3 of the paper since most of the paper is A level, not AS, so many of the students are only able to do AS questions, not the harder A level ones.

Wave Particle Duality

What is light? How many colours are there.?Are some colours just the figment of the mind like red and green light makes yellow? Is white light real, or is it made up of other colours? And is it a wave or a particle? So many questions to find answers to.

 

Biomass

Calculations of Biomass. How many aphids on a leaf? What percentage are infected? The mass of one aphid multiplies up compared to the mass of the tree.

 

Sorts and Searches

 How do sorts and searches work, and what are their advantages? Mechanically modelling them to see how they might work gives the students another way to visualise what is going on.

Online lessons

 Teaching online with Zoom. We can still do experiments, but they are harder by remote control or have to be demos. But still, with a selection of cameras and tools, we can still make great lessons to be remembered.

Electrolysis

AQA required practical electrolysis but quite a few year 11 students had not done it so after a quick refresher on the theory they had a go and correctly predicted the chemicals and successfully tested for oxygen, hydrogen and chlorine gases.