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Conference: Brecon hosts 10th teacher's conference Summer school: Science summer school heads to Crete Award: The Corti Science Prize Radioactivity: Scottish beach is no beta off Workshop: Heureka project promotes teaching Experiments: Spanish project proves that learning science can be exciting Lecture: IOP schools lecture journeys from x-rays to antimatter Correction to the news item 'Delegates experience universality' Forthcoming events

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The paper describes the mechanics of cherry pit projectiles and ends with showing the similarity between cherry pit launching and chameleon tongue projecting mechanisms. The whole story is written as an investigation, following steps that resemble those typically taken by scientists and can therefore serve as an illustration of scientific reasoning and how scientific knowledge is built.

With the start of the LHC, the new particle collider at CERN, the ATLAS experiment is also providing high-energy particle collisions for educational purposes. Several education projects—education scenarios—have been developed and tested on students and teachers in several European countries within the Learning with ATLAS@CERN project. These highly appreciated projects could become a new component in many teachers' classrooms. The Learning with ATLAS portal and the information on the ATLAS public website make it possible for teachers to design educational material for their own situations. To be able to work with real data adds a new dimension to particle physics explorations at school.

This paper describes a secondary school experience which is intended to help students to think profoundly about some energy-related concepts. It is quite different to other experiences of mechanics because the focus is not on the quantitative calculation of energy conservation but on the qualitative understanding of energy degradation. We first present an experience where students study the friction produced between a wheel and a piece of copper foil that acts as a brake pad. Then, we present an educational approach specially designed for the experience. Some visual representations have also been specially designed to support the learning process.

Constant technological advancement has facilitated access to digital cameras and cell phones. Involving students in a video production project can work as a motivating aspect to make them active and reflective in their learning, intellectually engaged in a recursive process. This project was implemented in high school level physics laboratory classes resulting in 22 videos which are considered as audiovisual reports and analysed under two components: theoretical and experimental. This kind of project allows the students to spontaneously use features such as music, pictures, dramatization, animations, etc, even when the didactic laboratory may not be the place where aesthetic and cultural dimensions are generally developed. This could be due to the fact that digital media are more legitimately used as cultural tools than as teaching strategies.

The form and function of a collaborative assessment known as a 'Buddy Quiz' is presented. The assessment is conducted in three successive phases over a contiguous 45–60 min class period. A portion of each quiz is completed in collaboration with one or two peers and a portion is completed without collaboration. The quiz is primarily summative and is also designed to include formative aspects. The representation in the quiz of the scientific enterprise as collaborative and individualistic is discussed. The employment of this instrument in a ninth-grade (age 15 years) conceptual physics course in an independent US secondary school is described and student feedback is presented.

A small ball rolls down from a quarter-circle to a frictionless plane. What will be the magnitude of the normal force when the ball arrives at the tangent point of the circle and the plane? According to the centripetal force formula, the normal force will be 3mg when the curvature radius of the circle is considered, but will be mg instead when the curvature radius of the plane is considered. Which one is the correct answer? The difficulty is that Newton's second law requires the second time derivative of displacement to be continuous; however, this condition is not fulfilled at the tangent point. In this paper we will discuss several possible solutions to this problem in detail.

Details are given of a visual photometer based on Joly's paraffin block apparatus of 1888. It is readily constructed from a couple of ordinary candles and a piece of aluminum foil, but enables two luminous sources to be compared to ± 15–20%; this is much better than the eye alone can do.

We report on a school–university collaboration to involve students in the deployment, testing, and operation of a very low frequency (VLF) radio receiver as part of an international network of such experiments. A background to the collaboration is presented, along with a summary of planning and development, and the ultimate deployment of the hardware. The integration and involvement of students in data analysis and testing is discussed and we summarize how students further develop their application of the scientific method via their role as custodians of the experiment. Such enrichment activities allow the students access to carry out non-curricular activities they would not normally have access to. We consider that the project as a whole may be used as a template for other school–university experimental collaborations.

In order to increase scientific literacy and the knowledge of science and technology of Europe's citizens, the European Commission suggests a more student-centred implementation of natural sciences in education systems. Inquiry-based learning (IBL) is not only an accepted method to promote students' interest and motivation, it also helps students learn the scientific method and fosters their research skills. However, IBL is rarely used in European classrooms. The main reason is that due to the strict curricula teachers do not have the time for preparation and they do not feel well equipped and trained in the use of IBL methods in class. The Photonics Explorer programme addresses these problems on the European level. Within the programme, a pan-European collaboration of professors, teachers and photonics experts have developed the Photonics Explorer kit for the teaching of optics and light-related topics in physics across various European secondary school curricula. It is designed for intra-curricular use and contains specially designed, hands-on experimental components, worksheets based on guided IBL and multimedia material. Additionally, the kit provides a teacher guide with a suggested lesson outline and sufficient background information for each topic.

Google Earth is a huge source of interesting illustrations of various natural phenomena. It can represent a valuable tool for science education, not only for teaching geography and geology, but also physics. Here we suggest that Google Earth can be used for introducing in an attractive way the physics of waves.

Since the 1600s, the developments in the understanding of electrical phenomena have frequently altered the models and metaphors used by physicists to describe and explain their experiments. However, to this day, certain relics of past theories still drench the vocabulary of the subject, serving as distracting fog for future students. This article attempts, through historical illumination, to shine through the mist of electrostatic terminology and offer a clearer view of the classical model of electricity.

The well-known result for the frequency of a simple spring–mass system may be combined with elementary concepts like speed = wavelength × frequency to obtain wave propagation speeds for an infinite chain of springs and masses (massesm held apart at equilibrium distance a by springs of stiffness γ). These propagation speeds are dependent on the wavelength of the wave. The dispersion is easily investigated by considering normal modes of increasing wavelength. This investigation also elegantly highlights how the dispersion physically arises in the form of effective spring constants due to the way in which neighbouring springs contribute to the propagation of each of the normal modes. The resulting propagation speedsv(λ) are given by an expression , which in the limit of large λ becomes . This of course means that —the serendipitous emergence of what turns out to be Viète's formula for π in terms of nested roots of 2.

This paper describes an exercise completed by sixth form college students to compare the power output from a local coal fired power station with the potential power output from renewable sources including wind farms, solar farms, and the proposed Mersey Tidal Barrage scheme.

As teachers, we want to encourage our students to ask searching questions on topics like how old the Universe is, how much of the Universe we can actually see and how far away the cosmic microwave background radiation is. But how many of us can honestly say we know the answers? And, even if we know the answers, how are we going to respond to the student's next obvious question regarding how the cosmic microwave background radiation can be 90 billion light years away when the Universe is only 13.6 billion years old?

In this article, using some straightforward mathematics I derive some interesting formulae which will not only provide reasonably accurate numerical answers, but, more importantly, give much needed insight into the paradoxes which abound when applying general relativity to the Universe as a whole.

The purpose of this work was to investigate ways in which everyday computers can be used in schools to fulfil several of the roles of more expensive, specialized laboratory equipment for teaching and learning purposes. The brief adopted was to keep things as straightforward as possible so that any school science department with a few basic tools can copy the ideas presented. The project has so far produced a simple, safe input device to enable use of a computer as an oscilloscope and the conversion of external speakers into a signal generator. They are not without their limitations, but the intention is that they may provide opportunities for hands-on learning in schools where budgets are very limited. Several teaching ideas are outlined, with pointers for further development. It is hoped that interest in the project may generate further application of the ideas to the teaching of high school physics.

Network for Astronomy School Education, NASE, is a project that is organizing courses for teachers throughout the entire world. The main objective of the project is to prepare secondary and primary school teachers in astronomy. Students love to know more about astronomy and teachers have the opportunity to observe the sky that every school has above it. Initially, this project is organizing courses for teachers. With the teachers who are highly motivated, working groups are created in order to continue their education in astronomy and sciences, and also to strengthen their relations with NASE and with each other. In this article we give details about the course, the contents, the complementary material for continuity, the structure of the working groups, and the countries in which we were beginning to work in 2010. There is also some information about future plans.

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DrDAQ DrDAQ software gets an upgrade

WEB WATCH Websites show range of physics

Retrograde exoplanets revive an old challengeDileep V Sathe

Are we over using equations at GCSE level?Michael Thompson

What Happens Next?: The balance of wooden spoonsDavid Featonby

Insights and Conundrums: Archimedes' boat: making holes in waterJon Ogborn

Correction to 'de Broglie's wavelength has many applications in the study of gases'