Allotropes of Carbon

I brought the allotropes of carbon to life with some real-life examples, such as a diamond cutting glass, carbon fibre tape cutting it with scissors, and looking at examples like my computer fan filter, drawing with a lump of natural graphite. Fullerenes beat me as I didn't have any!

 And the real life examples

Automatic Titrations

 One of the things I teach is repeating titrations to get answers within 0.5ml of all the others. Using the @pascoscientfic titration drop counter, I only have to do this once and produce a perfect titration curve and temperature curve at the same time.

Slide Rule

 How does a slide Rule work? I created a number line slide rule with two rulers as an example, then raced students with a calculator, showing that some old technology has some advantages, especially when you don't need 9 or 10 sig figs.

Strobe

 Using a strobe light at the same frequency as the vibrating string freezes the string, making the counting of the nodes and measuring the wavelength much easier, so the velocity can be measured.

Blood Tests

 Playing detective identifying blood using simple ABO blood tests on artificial blood. Fun and educational, leading to an understanding of tissue rejection and markers on cells for identification.

Testing Water

 In GCSE Chemistry, water samples from Rivers, rainwater, and the sea were tested for pH. Rainwater had the lowest pH, and seawater had the salt extracted and desalinized. In biology, the same water was tested for bugs. River water won having the most colonies of bacteria—but it was from the Thames, so there was no surprise here.

Paper 2 Practice

 The students are now working hard on GCSE Maths Paper 2 Practice and A Level Paper 1 Practice, so they are ready for next week's exams. It may be a holiday for some, but the students are working hard, perhaps harder than they have worked before.