Keep on skydiving

A report of the meeting in October of the Gp4 Curriculum review group has just been published on the OCC . It's the first stage of the curriculum review process that will prepare the new subject guides for first examination in 2016. I've just had a quick read through thought I'd mention a couple of points. First about this statement "state of the art software developments have blurred the distinction between real and virtual investigations". Have they? I can still tell the difference between virtual and real, I thought this blurring was only in science fiction, "The Matrix" etc. I think that simulations are great for two things, firstly understanding theory and secondly modelling situations so that the underlying theory can be seen more clearly (pretty much the same as the first really). I do not think they should replace activities where students manipulate real physical systems. I have always thought that one of the points of doing practical work was to see the shortcomings of our simplified theory, a sort of teaser to further study. I have heard the argument that in "real physics" the experimenters are usually sitting at a computer screen while the action happens down the end of a 5km long tube, but we are not dealing with cutting edge physics we are trying to teach the basics and to do that surely its best to see the real thing. Why do people bother going skydiving when they can simulate it on XBox? Well they do and I want to encourage them to keep jumping out of planes.

The guy in the photo is one of my former students Jens Møller from Greenland, I think there is the odd sample of his work scattered about inside the site too.