WORMS MAKING FOR FREEDOM

October 20th 2019 and after a week of worry I decided it was finally time to investigate the wormeries and see if the kilogram of worms were still with us. I am finding the stress and responsibility of these hard to take.

My plan, empty each wormery on an old piece of vinyl, investigate what is there and remake each one as they’ll be alone for a week. This was made more difficult as a very cute and friendly robin has been following me around the garden for the last fortnight and passes behind you after you’ve moved any piece of garden soil.

It was really heartwarming to see oodles of big fat juicy worms fall onto the vinyl. They weren’t moving much but were certainly a good size and huddled together in some big piles. The bottom of the blue wormery was quite wet, this was the one with no drainage. The paper had gone slimy and the potato skins were still undigested. Katrina, your McDonald’s straw is still there, but I think the bacteria might be thinking about working on it. So a new cardboard base, screwed up paper, the worms and then some partially digested compost. Lid back on and ready for off. The robin was flapping around so I posted a guard at the door.

Even the pink wormery had worms but the bottom was slimy with sand and paper- whoops I forgot to take a photo of this. So I’ve made up the box, with fresh cardboard and moved some of the worms from the blue box to the pink one and added more partially digested leaf mould / compost. Lid back on.

I was in two minds as to whether I ought to hold out one for the robin as a treat, but then Miss Crozier came to mind and I couldn’t bear to sacrifice one of the little cuties. Everything back in order, I stepped inside to get cleaned up and then remembered I ought to take a photo of the robin. It was then I noticed the escapees. I’ve no idea where they came from but at least 10 were making their way to freedom down the cracks in the paving and across the slabs. I couldn’t pull one up (see photos). If the robin gets you it isn’t my fault as I did give you a little tug to put you back.

So to the Sophie and Hollie- I’ve not killed them and they ought to be ready for you to get them through the winter next week!

Sorry the photos are in the wrong order with the escapees first.

Worms move in!

Well, Wednesday 4th September one group in the Climate Catastrophe Group built their wormery. We are going to look into recycling of food and break down of fruit and vegetables. Worms do create greenhouse gases, but play an important part in maintaining the soil, which has taken a hammering over the last 60 years.

Unfortunately the worms arrived late on Thursday 5th September and had to be in the wormery before the weekend. The students hadn’t quite finished the wormery, so many came up during their lunch break and helped get the worms a temporary start. Our biggest concern is the amount of moisture that we need. The wormery isn’t a draining one, so getting the air and moisture levels is important. We also had to put all the worms in the one box as the second box wasn’t ready.

Let’s hope the worms make it through the weekend. The suspense is terrible and the temperature this weekend was pretty warm, the first dry weekend in four weeks- drat.

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HEAT topic resources 2021

Hooray! we’re back to doing our heat unit with a few minor changes. Let’s see if I can upload the ppp here! They’re rather large. No idea why I’ve large gaps. Originally these showed the pdf files and now I’ve no idea what has happened!

Conduction

NB if you want a copy of the Conduction ppp you’ll need to email me, as it has embedded video it is a whopping 484 MB! I’ve taken out the videos and its just 98MB

Convection

Radiation

Radiation part 2 and Intro to Heat Loss

Heat Loss From Houses- Planning Sheet

Scroll down for the old Heat Resources

Notes for the Heat Theory

Click on the red link below to open the theory notes in pdf format.

Heat theory 2016

These are the end notes for the HEAT TOPIC

Click on the red link below to open the final summary notes in pdf format.

End of Topic Heat Notes- JAH

Thanks to Adam P for holding the camera as I did this demo. It shows so much Science in one large boiling tube! Convection, lack of conduction, state of matter, floating and sinking, density! Hope you like it.

The gauze is there only because the ice floats on the water and the ice needs to be at the bottom for the experiment to work.

3 States of matter in one tube from Mrs Physics on Vimeo.

or watch on youtube

These are a set of results from the Doll’s House. What happens at 20 000 s and what happens at 33,000s? State how the graph would be different if the house was well insulated? Why is the upstairs at a higher temperature? Try to describe the Physics behind each of the graphs.

Below are the resources for the HEAT topic that you’ll cover in S1 Physics. You might not be given all of the information by your teacher, but you can always use the additional materials to read around the subject, that’s what makes a successful learner, confident individual and responsible citizen.

Notes for the Heat Theory

Click on the red link below to open the theory notes in pdf format.

Heat theory 2016

Continue reading “HEAT topic resources 2021”

Climate change

In these posts I’ll try to add content about the most important topic facing our world. I will only use evidence based Science to make my points.

Having Mr Physics on the case helps as he’s been involved in measuring this stuff from the late 1980s to the beginning of the twenty first century.

Here is the definitive link for all things Climate Change, ask an adult if it is too hard.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
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Light & Beyond

Inductiveload, NASA [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons

This Physics Block covers Beyond the Visible after covering light. Attached is the outcomes that you should cover in your course.

Some people are unfortunate and have colour deficiency. This is usually a genetic condition.

The different types are protanomaly, which is a reduced sensitivity to red light, deuteranomaly which is a reduced sensitivity to green light (the most common form of colour blindness) and tritanomaly which is a reduced sensitivity to blue light (extremely rare).

Reflection for S3

In this task I ask you to research colour deficiency and complete the template.

Colour Deficiency Class Task, you might want to add a section about careers not open for those with colour deficiency

Revision Mind Map

This is part of a series of brilliant Mind Maps made by Miss Milner for the N5 Physics Course. You ought to be able to fill it all in!

Uses of EM Waves

One of the uses of UV radiation is a security feature of bank notes. Shining UV radiation on to the bank note causes them to fluoresce (the atoms in the material take in the UV radiation and re-emits it as light which we can see)

Look at how advanced the fluorescing shapes and colours are.

Experiments- Uses of UV to check the authenticity of bank notes

IR cameras are used by the police to track for criminals at night but they are also really useful to the fire brigade at finding people in smoked filled buildings, you can’t hide behind a bin bag and even a hand print can leave a “heat print”.

You can’t hide in a bin bag if someone has the IR camera on you!

Did you know you can be on the radio? Not very musical but it can drown out Radio Scotland.

Do try this at home, use cheese marshmallows or chocolate but you need to take the turntable out and DON’T put things on a metal tray!

Waves S3 Homework Book

The electromagnetic (em) spectrum is a collection of transverse waves that all travel at the same speed in air, the speed of light, 300 000 000 m/s. (equivalent to 7.5 times round the Earth every second)

One of the waves is VISIBLE LIGHT

A=amplitude λ = wavelength

Others are RADIO & TV, MICROWAVE.

The others are INFRA-RED, ULTRA VIOLET, X-RAYS, GAMMA WAVES.

The only difference between each of these waves is their wavelength or frequency. They all fit the formula

Speed= frequency × wavelength

v=f λ

The order is important and to remember it use the following rhyme!

Randy                  Radio & TV

Monkeys              Microwaves

Invade                 Infrared

Venezuela           Visible

Using                   Ultraviolet

Xylophone           X-rays

Gunships             Gamma

Period, T, is the time for one wave to pass a point and is measured in seconds.

Frequency, f is the number of waves being produced or passing a point per second. Frequency is measured in Hertz (Hz)

Here are lots of resources for you to check and practice. My utmost apologies if I have not credited people for sending this material. As soon as I know who you are I will thank you personally.

REVISION GAMES FOR WAVES

https://wordwall.net/resource/9421925

S3 Physics Review

Homework Exercise

S3 Review (Complete at the end of the course)

We have covered three topics this year.

  • BEYOND THE VISIBLE (covering the EM Spectrum v=fλ, uses of EM radiation, research projects, make your own practical, reflection, refraction, diffraction)
  • ROAD SAFETY 2, (covering acceleration, forces, vectors, Road Crash Investigators, Tart Ma Kart, Newton’s Three Laws of Motion)
  • SPACE. (definitions of space, the big bang, The Martian, Rockets, Newton’s Three Laws of Motion review, stars, light years, challenges of space travel, Moon Myths)

Mark each topic out of 10, with 1 being the worst and 10 being the best- GIVE A PROPER REASON for your score a short paragraph at least saying
which parts of each course were the best and what were the worst . State what SKILLS you’ve learned such as calculator work, arithmetic, road safety skills, Road Crash Investigator, Experimental Design (Beyond the Visible) Space.

Lastly state what you wished we had changed. Only sensible answers.

July 2019
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S3 Space

We aim to check out lots of information about Space and the Universe. As it is rather a large topic and contains all we know and lots that we don’t we wont be able to cover it all. This is the content statements that we hope to cover.

https://www.mrsphysics.co.uk/bge/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/S3-SPACE-OUTCOMES_2.docx
https://www.mrsphysics.co.uk/bge/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/S3-SPACE-OUTCOMES_3.docx

Just heard about this great video on twitter, now you can picture the speed of light.

Just to get a feel for the vastness of space, try the link below. Don’t fall asleep before you get to jupiter.

https://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html

Task Space General Knowledge

So lets see what your General Knowledge is like? answer the following questions and look up any you don’t know

SPACE GENERAL KNOWLEDGE QUIZ

  1. In terms of space what makes one day?
  2. In terms of space what is a year?
  3. Why do we have leap years?
  4. How long does it take for the moon to go round the Earth?
  5. What causes a solar eclipse?
  6. What causes a lunar eclipse? 
  7. Why aren’t eclipses more regular?
  8. What do the following terms refer
    • Sum total of everything
    • Dominant member of the solar system
    • Large body orbiting a sun
    • A natural satellite of a planet
    • Basic building block of the universe
    • Planets orbiting one or more suns
  9. How far is the moon from the Earth if it take light 1.2 seconds to get here? (Use v=d/t)
  10. How far is the Sun from the Earth if it takes light 8 minutes to get here? (Use v=d/t)
  11. How far is ONE LIGHT YEAR (ly)?
  12. How far is the Alpha Centuri from the Earth if it take light 4.3 years to get here? (Use v=d/t) or any previous calculation.
  13. Rank these in order of size with the smallest first      SUN, GALAXY, STAR, MOON, SOLAR SYSTEM, PLANET, UNIVERSE
  14.  Which lens in a telescope produces the image?
  15. Which lens in a telescope magnifies the image?
  16. List the colours of the visible spectrum with the LOWEST frequency first.
  17. List the members of the electromagnetic spectrum in order of INCREASING FREQUENCY
  18. Name the device for splitting up white light into different colours.

S3 Physics – The Solar System Tasks

  1. Make sure you have completed definitions for: Moon, Planet, Star, Exoplanet, Galaxy, Solar System, Universe 2. Try and find an exoplanet mentioned in the Scale of the Universe https://htwins.net/scale2/
  2. Make sure you have noted in your jotter the order of the planets in our solar system – try and come up with a mnemonic to help you remember the order e.g. My Very Elderly Mother Just Served Up Nachos
  3. Create a fact file for a planet of your choice from our Solar System and The fact file should include:

Additional Tasks

  1. Make your own timeline of exoplanet discoveries
  2. Design an exoplanet. NASA have made a programme for this: https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/interactives/ and select ‘Extreme Planet Makeover’
  3. Watch ‘The Planets’ Series by Professor Brian Cox on iplayer – you can use this for notes for your factfile! https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p07922lr/the-planets

Space Mind Maps

This is part of a series of N5 Mind Maps made by Miss Milner. I have split them up into separate topics.

Uncrewed Mission Task :

Below is my example of the type of thing that you could do. I’ve used too much cut and paste, but it is so I know if you’ve copied my space probe you’ve got too much from the internet. I have used the questions to make headings, although as not all of the headings fitted I made some up of my own. I would have incorporated the Appendix into my work but didn’t have time, but it shows that it is a resource I used which is all about my space probe. If I could have found some of my posters and made a model to include it would have been better.

List of Space Probes

Find the name of a SUCCESSFUL space probe and research it, the link to the list of Space Probes below might help. Choose an UNCREWED SPACE MISSION. It can be from any country i.e. you can choose any space agency, NASA, ESA, Roscosmos, etc . RESEARCH before answering the questions below. Complete a 4 slide presentation with the following information.

Answer the following
  1. What is a space probe?
  2. What is the name of the mission you have selected? (NB Only one person to complete one mission so the first one to tell me your mission the better choice you’ll have)
  3. Name of the space probe you have researched
  4. When was it designed?
  5. What is special about its design?
  6. How is it fit for the purpose it was designed?
  7. Who built it?
  8. Who funded it?
  9. When was it sent into space? When did the space craft launch?
  10. Were the UK involved it its design, manufacture or tracking?
  11. When was it launched and from where?
  12. Where there any space probes similar to this one?
  13. What is its purpose?
  14. Has it found anything ground breaking?
  15. How far has it travelled?
  16. Any other interesting facts about this space probe?
  17. Provide some photos, pictures (not copyright ones) of your space mission. Remember they are often made of several parts, one to get there and one to research when at the destination.
  18. What was the aim / purpose of the mission?
  19. When were the expected mission dates?
  20. How long did the mission last?
  21. When did the space craft reach its destination?
  22. Tell me about the space probe, route it took, problems it overcame, logistics etc (look up this word)
  23. Did the mission last longer than expected?
  24. What did the mission discover / conclude?
  25. Did they get some unexpected data?
  26. Did the mission exceed expectations?
  27. How did the mission affect us on Earth?
  28. What exciting facts have you learned about this mission?
  29. What information can you share about the mission?

List of Solar System probes

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncrewed_spacecraft

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_uncrewed_NASA_missions

Some of the Space Agencies from across the world. Some are state sponsored, some private companies.
Task MOON LANDINGS:  Then research the MOON HOAX  questions below. These are questions people say to try to persude the uneducated that man hasn’t been to the moon, but Science can answer all these queries. Between you all arrange to cover all the answers but you don’t need to do them all yourself. (due after Easter)
It’s a myth- no one’s been to the Moon this is what they say
  1. The quality of the photographs is implausibly high.
  2. There are no stars in any of the photos.
  3. The angle and colour of shadows are inconsistent. This suggests that artificial lights were used.
  4. There are identical backgrounds in photos which, according to their captions, were taken miles apart. This suggests that a painted background was used.
  5. The number of photos taken is implausibly high. Up to one photo per 50 seconds
  6. The photos contain artefacts like the two seemingly matching ‘C’s on a rock and on the ground. These may be labelled studio props.
  7. Who filmed Neil Armstrong stepping onto the Moon?
  8. The Astronauts appear to Glow-in-the-Dark
  9. The astronauts could not have survived the trip because of exposure to radiation from the Van Allen radiation belt and galactic ambient radiation (see radiation poisoning and health threat from cosmic rays).
  10. There’s no way the lunar buggy could fit in that little craft.
  11. Film in the cameras would have been fogged by this radiation.
  12. The Moon’s surface during the daytime is so hot that camera film would have melted.
  13. The flag placed on the surface by the astronauts fluttered despite there being no wind on the Moon.
  14. The footprints on the moon aren’t the same as the pattern of the soles of Neil Armstrong’s shoes
  15. Footprints in the Moondust are unexpectedly well preserved, despite the lack of moisture.
  16. The Lunar Modules made no blast craters or any sign of dust scatter.
  17. The second stage of the launch rocket and/or the Lunar Module ascent stage made no visible flame
  18. The Lunar Modules weighed 17 tons and made no mark on the Moondust, yet footprints can be seen beside them
  19. The air conditioning units that were part of the astronauts’ spacesuits could not have worked in an environment of no atmosphere.
  20. There should have been more than a two-second delay in communications between Earth and the Moon, at a distance of 400,000 km
Task THE MARTIAN:

A virtual movie night and as many of us watch it “together” and we can comment on Teams. The Martian (movie) Watch the movie The Martian with Matt Damon and get your pop corn out. I want you to divide a double page in your jotter into 4 and mark the sections “The Planet Mars”, “Living on Mars”, “Being alone/ the human resolve”, “technology.” As you go through the film think carefully about bullet points for each section. Maybe his isolation is easier to understand than ever before.

RESOURCES

 

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