Static Electricity to Direct Current Demo

 A good fun experiment taking the static electricity from a Wimshurst machine and passing this to a capacitor plate and using a graphite-covered ping pong ball to transfer the charges which can then be picked up on a beam galvanometer.

Biodiversity

Thank goodness some councils in England are seeing sense in biodiversity. The councils are starting to leave large areas of parks to go more native, and as a result, there is a burst of biodiversity coming along.

 

Barton’s pendulums

 Why do the pendulum’s the same length power each other but the ones that are different lengths don’t. Some homework to keep the students busy

Temperature and rates of reactions

Not so easy to do in an hour, to set up the solutions at the correct temperature and do all the experiments but we succeeded with time to space thanks to doing this with @pascoscientific colourimeter and Capstone Software.

 

Rates of Reaction

 Starting with the experiment and working out the individual rates of each reaction using the reaction of Sodium Thiosulfate and Hydrochloric acid in a @pascoscientific colourimeter, the students then plotted the rates against concentration and were pleased to get a relationship.

By pooling the class results, they got a set of error bars that showed the experiment could either be a curve 2nd order or a straight line first order.

Simple Harmonic Motion

We had considerable fun using @Pascoscientific sensors to create a series of experiments to demonstrate simple Harmonic Motion. The students learnt a lot about the properties of pendula because they could set up and record so many experiments in such a short time.

 

Mk2 Circle to Sine Wave

 Making sense of CAST diagrams - how the circle maps onto a sinewave using some @Lego to help. Using an offset wheel to produce a sinewave as the wheel rotates, then showing the same on the @Casio GG50 calculator.