A place to find help on all aspects of teaching, over more than one part of the website.
Here are some documents for setting exam papers which should be of use for teachers and some practice at answering questions from the command words.
Whilst the document below was written for covid times there are some great nuggets if you can read through it all.
My thanks to Mr S Farmer and Mr A Bailey for these.
Haven’t got the time to prepare fully tagged high quality prelims? Try P&N
December 2024
These are the materials from the Light and Sound presentation I gave on 27th November 2024. Many of the slides come from the powerpoint I made for the BGE in the Beyond the Visible and Energy and Sound Topic.
Above is the powerpoint for the session with some of the perception slides. More information and examples can be found at the links below
S1 The Visible & Beyond – BGE (S1-S3)
Here is the sheet to the links mentioned
November 2024
For the 49th Stirling Physics Teachers’ Conference, here are the details of the events and helpsheets etc.
Sorry if this post isn’t as pristine as I had hoped just now, but currently I am dealing with a sinkable boat! You think I’m kidding- check out the blog section when this is all over.
Your Climate change pack
In the pack
Please note the Aluminium plate has sharp edges. Either get these sanded down or only use this as a demonstration being aware that these sharp edges can cause cuts.
Don’t eat the thermochromic paper, and don’t burn yourselves trying to heat something up too much.
The ball-bearing is very small, choking risk and , if dropped a slip risk.
Danger of suffocation from the plastic bag- do I need to write this?
A great demo of conduction but not of the heating but of the cooling side. Often a difficult concept for students if the removal of heat!
Here is the kit we couldn’t afford. You can put a couple of O-rings around your plate to stop the melted ice going all over the desk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrYAmEptMLQ
Here is the link to your kit! I think you’ll agree, despite my bad placement of the kitchen thermometer that is shows a rapid and marked difference.7
https://resources.perimeterinstitute.ca/products/evidence-for-climate-change?variant=12375510089806
I’ll get the sock video done as soon as possible.
Basically, get the students to put their hands behind their back and another student to put the black sock on one hand and the white sock on the other. When they feel one hotter than the other they ought to raise their hand. Obviously it ought to be the black sock, but there is always one. This wasn’t as convincing as the JB Sports thicker and uniform socks but we couldn’t afford them.
Another task you can try (I’ve got kids to do this one) is test my theory that wearing black socks gives smellier feet than white sock. I got a student to walk around in one of each and it was exciting as it was a PE day. Try it yourself and see what you think.
https://www.stevespanglerscience.com/store/heat-sensitive-paper.html
TO BE CONTINUED WHEN THE CRISIS IS OVER
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VeqtZHSVcw
This isn’t a talk about retirement, so if you think it is then you’re coming to the wrong place.
Here are some of the resources and links from my talk:-
https://www.mrsphysics.co.uk/blog/stop-the-bomb
For making mazes, which are great for definition learning
https://www.festisite.com/text-layout/maze
SMARTCOLOURS- contact Teaching Resources, Middx University. Tel: 020 8447 0342
If I was doing this cipher again I would only use the capitals or lower case for the a,b,c and uppercase for the symbols. Remember not to use punctuation as it doesn’t come up! The excel template is given below for you to edit and make your own. Obviously you can make your own but using a font that is already available, saves a lot of time in creating the message and translating it for checking.
Notes to make a safe LINAC and CYCLOTRON particle acelerators from salad bowl or guttering. Including some H&S notes
This appears to be all the rage and you can find many youtube videos on making a salad bowl particle accelerator. Here are some of the materials that I’ve done to help.
Brian Redman updated the IOP tests and I was going over these and got very behind. I will put the updated tests in this post in 3 tables N5, H and AH. Do not share these with anyone except in school Physics Departments. They are not to be used by tutors. If we lose the rigour of protecting these they are useless to everyone.
Hi folks, with that panic that has arisen with the imminent demise of talk physics (I can’t say I was a fan) I’ve tried to add some of the essential resources here.
Give me time to upload them.
They are password protected, and not for use by people who tutor and make money out of other people’s work. These are for teachers who are busting a gut trying to keep up with the constant changes in students and education.
Hot off the press, I’ve just worked out the cutoff scores for each grade at each level. Here it is.
| AH | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| year | total scaled | A | A% | B | B% | C | C% | D | D% |
| 2019 | 130 | 90 | 69 | 77 | 59 | 64 | 49 | 57 | 44 |
| 2018 | 130 | 87 | 67 | 73 | 56 | 60 | 46 | 53 | 41 |
| 2017 | 130 | 84 | 65 | 70 | 54 | 57 | 44 | 50 | 38 |
| 2016 | 130 | 84 | 65 | 72 | 55 | 61 | 47 | 55 | 42 |
| 2015 RAH | 125 | 86 | 69 | 73 | 58 | 61 | 49 | 55 | 44 |
| 2015 Trad | 125 | 85 | 68 | 72 | 58 | 60 | 54 | 54 | 43 |
| Higher | |||||||||
| year | total scaled | A | A% | B | B% | C | C% | D | D% |
| 2019 | 150 | 100 | 67 | 84 | 56 | 69 | 46 | 53 | 35 |
| 2018 | 120 | 79 | 66 | 67 | 56 | 55 | 45 | 49 | 41 |
| 2017 | 120 | 82 | 68 | 69 | 58 | 57 | 48 | 51 | 43 |
| 2016 | 120 | 84 | 70 | 71 | 59 | 59 | 49 | 53 | 44 |
| 2015 | 120 | 77 | 64 | 65 | 54 | 54 | 45 | 48 | 40 |
| N5 | |||||||||
| year | total scaled | A | A% | B | B% | C | C% | D | D% |
| 2019 | 125 | 86 | 69 | 72 | 58 | 58 | 46 | 44 | 35 |
| 2018 | 125 | 86 | 69 | 72 | 58 | 58 | 46 | 44 | 35 |
| 2017 | 100 | 68 | 68 | 56 | 56 | 45 | 45 | 39 | 39 |
| 2016 | 100 | 69 | 69 | 58 | 58 | 48 | 48 | 43 | 43 |
| 2015 | 100 | 68 | 68 | 58 | 58 | 48 | 48 | 43 | 43 |
| 2014 | 100 | 68 | 68 | 57 | 57 | 47 | 54 | 42 | 42 |
As part of the moderation process we’ve got some fake student scripts.
I have not done a definitive marking instructions but I believe the person who sat this paper, a Drew Escutcheon, has made some sneaky errors to look for.
Thanks to Mr C Rossi so making a marking grid for you to add your answers. When we’ve got a finalised MI I’ll publish a commentary with a password so you can’t cheat!
This is a video of an IoP Coaching Session that I took part in on 27th October 2020 trying to inspire teachers to grasp the opportunities that are available for them and their students.
https://www.britishscienceassociation.org/
https://www.britishscienceweek.org/about-us/grants/
https://www.stem.org.uk/enrichment/competitions-challenges
http://www.flamsteed.org/fasjbrown.htm
https://www.britishscienceweek.org/find-a-presenter/
https://www.mrsphysics.co.uk/bge/category/heat/
https://www.mrsphysics.co.uk/bge/category/s1electricitytopic/
https://royalsociety.org/grants-schemes-awards/grants/partnership-grants/application-process/
https://www.science-on-stage.eu/page/display/4/111/0/festival-2022
Faulkes https://observe.lco.global/
This is a presentation I gave on AH Uncertainties for the IoP. It was the end of term and that’s why I am nearly falling asleep. I had to update it as I had indeed taken the absolute and not fractional uncertainty in T to double for the uncertainty in T2.
As an IoP Coach in Scotland it has been a privilege to produce some resources for a course on language in Science. The talk can be downloaded from Talkphysics but here is the presentation.
