How many students does it take....
Today my first year class tried out the balloon drop experiment to find out if a the terminal velocity of a falling balloon is proportional to 1/radius. I gave two options for measuring the terminal velocity,...
Back to mechanics
This week I’ve been dealing with gases with my first year classes. At SL all that is require is an understanding of how the kinetic theory explains the relationship between PV and T. As usual I was using...
Whistling wind
Today I was doing standing waves in pipes with my standard level class. I was demonstrating the usual array of tubes and whistles when one of the students, Fredrik seen here whistling through his teeth,...
Cold hands
Today my first year classes were doing the hand hot practical. A small amount of water in a test tube is heated by holding it in the hand. The unusual thing was that some of the group that I had first...
A treat for the eyes and ears
Every year I give my class a real treat, I show them the tuning forks. As you can see they are a truly impressive set of forks in a beautiful wooden box with a red velvet lining. Students always gasp...
Asians
Several years ago I thought it might be a good idea to get workshop participants to rearrange the syllabus into different orders. To this avail I cut the subject guide up into individual statements and...
Labs for the sake of it
Almost every practical I do with my class is assessable according to IB criteria. There are several reasons for this, one is that the criteria fit well with the type of experiments we do in physics. Change...
It\'s a wind up
I'm always experiencing something just like Deja vu except that in Deja vu you think something has happened before but what I experience has happened before. Here's an example; Consider the box on the...
Heroes of telemark
Last week one of the last surviving heroes of Telemark, Birger Stromsheim died at the age of 101. Living in Norway, I feel I should always make a point of mentioning the story of the Norwegian heavy water...
Most annoying practical
When I started teaching I used to spend half my time trying to get the class to be quite now I find myself encouraging them to make noise. Today my HL class did the sliding whistle practical, probably...