Away from Teaching

 It looks like a good day to get on with some reorganisation of the classroom as I can't do much sailing today and the classroom certainly needs a tidy.

Memory

 Different types of memory from 1K chips to 32Gb RAM Modules and much in between. The students learnt how they work and everything about RAM and ROM.

Order of Reactivity

Order of reactivity of metals - this was a tough one for the students because they had to devise their own experiments; with a lot of help, they achieved a result. Next time they have to compare metals and their sulfates prediction and proof.

 

Tension Protractor

 When you need the @pascoscientific tension protractor, nothing is quite like it. The Zipline practical becomes a breeze when you know the force and direction, which are otherwise difficult to calculate or measure.

Sicherman Dice

 These dice have the numbers 1-2-2-3-3-4 and 1-3-4-5-6-8, but give the same sums with the same probabilities as two normal 1-to-6 dice. The only difference is the odd of rolling a double which as usually 6/36 are 4/36 for the Sicherman dice.

Seebeck effect

Thermoelectric generation using a Peltier Module to utilize the Seebeck effect to generate voltage. When heat is applied to one of the two semiconductors, heated electrons flow toward the cooler semiconductor. If the pair is connected through an electrical circuit, direct current flows through that circuit.
 

Cheek cells +

 What are all those little black things with my cheek cells asked a student, looking down the microscope at his freshly prepared cheek cell slide. These are bacteria. He went and brushed his teeth immediately and prepared a new slide.

Wind up Car Racing

 Physics is fun. The students played with wind-up racing cars to investigate energy changes. They came up with all the energy losses on their own, demonstrating the benefits of practical learning over theoretical learning.

Algorithms

 Studying the principles of Algorithm design helps students create faster, more efficient programs that are usually easier to create and debug.

Shapes of Molecules

The shape of the molecule affects the shape of the crystal. Modelling using dice shows how different shapes can and can't fit together and gives rise to the crystal shapes we observe.

 

Lenz's Law

 Demoing Lenz's Law but using the @pascoscientific Metre Stick so the students can see what is happening. It stopped all the argument about slowing down by banging on the side of a copper pipe or becoming stuck or me having another magnet in my hand

Maths Equipment

Attempting to get all the students to have to hand all the basic Maths Equipment that they may need, A calculator, decent compass, 360 protractor, tracing paper pencils and rubber. Some come better equipped but most fail to have all the basics.
 

Magneticforces in a wire

Measuring the magnetic field forces in a wire using an electronic balance with different voltages and recording the orientation of the field according to the electronic flow. 

 

Liver as a catalyst

 Comparing Catalase in the Liver as a catalyst with Potassium Iodide to look at the different rates and how effective enzymes are. We managed to cook the liver pieces with the violence of the reaction.

Raspberry Pi Server

 Resources are always a problem in teaching, and letting students build and maintain their own servers is only possible using Raspberry Pi computers running Linux. The students learn so much from building and running their own computer systems.

Exothermic Reaction

Adding Magnesium turnings to copper sulfate gave a nice temperature rise recorded on @pascoscientific Capstone. Different groups doing different experiments meant that we could easily share the data.

 

Magnetic field

 Measuring the changes in magnetic field with distance, using @pascoscientific magnetic field sensor and the smartcard to provide the position information.

Lightbox and Graphs

 Comparing two graphs can be difficult. If they are on a computer, then it's simple, but paper graphs need a lightbox so that one can be seen through the other.

Particle accelerator

 Building a PingPong ball accelerator with the students from some sticky copper strips and a mixing bowl powered by a Van de Graaf generator. It's not exactly fast, but it does move.

Eye Lens

Modelling the eye lens from @Pascoscientific. Looking at ordinary lenses just does not give an idea of how the eye works, but this lens changes as water is added and removed much in the same way as the eye lens works.

 

Online teaching

 Online teaching. Using multiple screens, cameras, visualisers controlled by an atem and stream deck to make on line teaching a breeze.

Hard Disk

Exploring how a hard disk works. Looking into the formatting and why a disk loses so much space on formatting and how this is used to access all the data.
 

alloys

 Ask a student for a magnetic metal and its iron. But get some coins out, and some are magnetic, and some are not, and they don't contain iron. 20p coins look the same but have different properties. Properties changed with different issues.

Metre Stick

 Seeing Lenz's Law with a magnet slowly sliding down on the outside of the @pascoscientific Metre Stick gives another insight to how this experiment works. We compared the rate to a 1p sliding down to measure the difference.

Parametric Graphing

 Using the @casio CG-50 calculator to sketch parametric functions. These are pretty hard to visualise but the calculator makes this a dream to do.

Coulombs Law

Measure the charge on two polystyrene balls with a coulomb meter, then bring them together and measure the change in force on the balance. The students had seen like charges repelling before, but this was the first time they had been able to measure this.

 

Vortex Mixer

 

Dissolving foods in water can be extremely difficult, and then it is hard for the students to get an accurate answer. Using a vortex mixer makes the food easier to dissolve and gives more accurate results.

Explain

 There are many key and command words found in the exam questions for all boards and all subjects. Teaching the students what to do with each keyword is vital to help them get full marks.

Building a working full adder circuit

Creating our own full adder circuit using AND XOR and OR gates to understand how computers work.