Education Scotland in partnership with the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance and SSERC has developed a series of nine professional learning videos focused on new content in Higher Physics.
Featuring some of Scotland’s most talented physicists, they have been designed to provide high quality, accessible professional learning. The videos cover Special relativity, The big bang, Gravitational waves, Collider physics, The standard model, Hubble’s law and nuclear fusion along with two providing guidance on experiments for the Higher Physics assignment.
These videos are available from Education Scotland’s NQ Higher Sciences website.
Included in the resource, kindly shared by SSERC, are the videos of two recent SSERC meets on Hubble’s law and Collider Physics.
Education Scotland would like to thank all of the contributors who gave so freely off their time.
We are pleased to announce that Twig and Tigtag have been procured, through competitive tender, by Education Scotland for a further 12 months through to July 2016. As a result, these award-winning online resources will continue to be available to all local authority schools through Glow for use by educators and learners across Scotland.
New resources, Twig assignments and Tigtag Junior, will also be added in late autumn to the existing package available. An accompanying resource, Reach-Out CPD – a professional learning resource from Twig World to support primary science – has also been recently made available to Glow users.
The cost of this new one year contract with Twig World Ltd is £430,000 (including VAT) and this is being funded through the Digital Learning and Teaching programme this year. This represents a significant investment in science and mathematics education which is a key priority within the current Programme for Government. In the longer term, it is likely that resources such as these will be procured via a local authority collaborative contract. What this means is that local authorities will be able to purchase digital resources of their choice and opt in to contracts accordingly. See the Education Scotland briefing for more information.
Learners and practitioners (including those in early learning and childcare, additional support needs, primary and secondary school settings) are encouraged to make use of these resources which can be found on the App Library of Glow.
More about Twig, Tigtag and Reach Out
Twig is an award-winning online teaching resource providing thousands of tailor-made, short films to help bring lessons to life. Content has been created by teachers and academics to support delivery of Curriculum for Excellence covering sciences, social studies and mathematics for learners aged 11-16. Twig Experiments offers over 300 short films covering 81 key experiments.
Tigtag is aimed at learners aged 7-11 years and provides online resources to support the teaching of primary science. It contains science in action videos, ready-made lesson plans, hundreds of images and diagrams, practical activities and fun facts. From the end of September, Glow users will also have access to Tigtag Junior which is an accompanying online science resource for learners aged 4-7 years.
Reach-Out CPD offers professional learning videos and resources for teachers delivering primary science and other aspects of Curriculum for Excellence.
Gravity runs the Universe. This free online course explains why, focussing on key concepts from the Big Bang to black holes.
About the course
What is gravity? This fundamental force is the common theme between concepts as intriguing as the Big Bang, black holes, dark energy, space-time, gravitational waves and the expansion of the Universe.
If these concepts pique your interest, this free online course is for you. It doesn’t require any background in physics or mathematics, just a simple curiosity about the Universe and our place in it.
Mark the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s theory of relativity
The theory of gravity, Einstein’s theory of relativity, was published exactly 100 years ago. This course presents in a simple manner the main ideas behind this theory, before explaining why “gravity is the engine of the Universe.”
The basic notions are then introduced to understand why the Universe is in expansion. We’ll find out:
• why the further you look, the more distant the past is;
• how we can tell what happened just after the Big Bang;
• what the dark components of the Universe are;
• why we’re so impatiently expecting the discovery of gravitational waves;
• and what happens when you cross the horizon of a black hole.
Learn with experts including a Nobel Prize-winning physicist
Over six weeks, you’ll learn with Pierre Binétruy, the Director of the Paris Centre for Cosmological Physics at Paris Diderot University, as well as the cosmologist, George Smoot, who will explain the discovery that earned him the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2006.
The BBC micro:bit is a pocket-sized computer that you can code, customise and control to bring your digital ideas, games and apps to life.
Measuring 4cm by 5cm, and designed to be fun and easy to use, users can create anything from games and animations to scrolling stories at school, at home and on the go – all you need is imagination and creativity.
The BBC micro:bit is completely programmable. That means each of its LEDS can be individually programmed as can its buttons, inputs and outputs, accelerometer, magnetometer and Bluetooth Smart Technology.
The BBC and partners are developing a wide range of support resources for parents, teachers and group leaders. These include projects and ideas on using the device straight away, so children can get coding in minutes.
There will be examples of both formal and informal learning resources. Informal learning resources will be usable outside the school environment, whether that’s at home, events or enthusiast groups or clubs.
Light plays a vital role in our everyday lives and technologies based on light are all around us. So we might expect that our understanding of light is pretty settled. But scientists have just uncovered a new fundamental property of light that gives new insight into the 150-year-old classical theory of electromagnetism and which could lead to applications manipulating light at the nanoscale.
It is unusual for a pure-theory physics paper to make it into the journal Science. So when one does, it’s worth a closer look. In the new study, researchers bring together one of physics’ most venerable set of equations – those of James Clerk’s Maxwell’s famous theory of light – with one of the hot topics in modern solid-state physics: the quantum spin Hall effect and topological insulators.
To understand what the fuss is about, let’s first consider the behaviour of electrons in the quantum spin Hall effect. Electrons possess an intrinsic spin as if they were tiny spinning-tops, constantly rotating about their axis. This spin is a quantum-mechanical property, however, and special rules apply – the electron has only two options open to it: it can either spin clockwise or anticlockwise (conventionally called spin-up or spin-down), but the magnitude of the spin is always fixed.
In certain materials, the spin of the electron can have a big effect on the way electrons move. This effect is called “spin-orbit coupling” and we can get an idea of how it works with a footballing analogy. By hitting a freekick with spin, a footballer can make the ball deviate to the left or the right as it travels through the air. The direction of the movement depends on which way the ball is spinning.
Spin-orbit coupling causes electrons to experience an analogous spin-dependent deflection as they travel, although the effect arises not from the Magnus effect as in the case for the football, but from electric fields within the material.
A normal electrical current consists of an equal mixture of moving spin-up and spin-down electrons. Due to the spin-orbit effect, spin-up electrons will be deflected one way, while spin-down electrons will be deflected the other. Eventually the deflected electrons will reach the edges of the material and be able to travel no further. The spin-orbit coupling thus leads to an accumulation of electrons with different spins on opposite sides of the sample.
This effect is known as the classical spin Hall effect, and quantum mechanics adds a dramatic twist on top. The quantum-mechanical wave nature of the travelling electrons organises them into neat channels along the edges of the sample. In the bulk of the material, there is no net spin. But at each edge, there form exactly two electron-carrying channels, one for spin-up electrons and one for spin-down. These edge channels possess a further remarkable property: the electrons that move in them are impervious to the disorder and imperfections that usually cause resistance and energy loss.
This precise ordering of the electrons into spin-separated, perfectly conducting channels is known as the quantum spin Hall effect, which is a classic example of a “topological insulator”– a material that is an electrical insulator on the inside but that can conduct electricity on its surface. Such materials represent a fundamentally distinct organisation of matter and promise much in the way of spintronic applications. Read heads of hard drives based on this technology are currently used in industry.
Beginning to see the light
Now, the new study suggests that the seeds of this seemingly exotic quantum spin Hall effect are actually all around us. And it is not to electrons that we should look to find them, but rather to light itself.
In modern physics, matter can be described either as a wave or a particle. In Maxwell’s theory, light is an electromagnetic wave. This means it travels as a synchronised oscillation of electric and magnetic fields. By considering the way in which these fields rotate as the wave propagates, the researchers were able to define a property of the wave, the “transverse spin”, that plays the role of the electron spin in the quantum spin Hall effect.
In a homogeneous medium, like air, this spin is exactly zero. However, at the interface between two media (air and gold, for example), the character of the waves change dramatically and a transverse spin develops. Furthermore, the direction of this spin is precisely locked to the direction of travel of the light wave at the interface. Thus, when viewed in the correct way, we see that the basic topological ingredients of the quantum spin Hall effect that we know for electrons are shared by light waves.
This is important because there has been an array of high-profile experiments demonstrating coupling between the spin of light and its direction of propagation at surfaces. This new work gives a integrative interpretation of these experiments as revealing light’s intrinsic quantum spin Hall effect. It also points to a certain universality in the behaviour of waves at surfaces, be they quantum-mechanical electron waves or Maxwell’s classical waves of light.
Harnessing the spin-orbit effect will open new possibilities for controlling light at the nanoscale. Optical connections, for example, are seen as a way of increasing computer performance, and in this context, the spin-orbit effect could be used to rapidly reroute optical signals based on their spin. With applications proposed in optical communications, metrology, and quantum information processing, it will be interesting to see how the impact of this new twist on an old theory unfolds.
A crowd funding web site recently raised more than two million US dollars to fund solar roadways. These roads, claim the developers, will remain snow-free, and, at the click of a switch, can be transformed into car parks or even sports pitches. In this activity students consider whether solar roadways are worth funding. They critique claims using reasoning and evidence, and apply what they know about generating electricity in solar cells, to make a decision.
Curriculum links include energy transfers, renewable energy sources, wave motion: waves transferring energy
Explore the science behind what you eat with this free online course.
About the course
Are we really what we eat? And how do we know what is in our food?
This free online course will look to answer some of these questions, by looking at the science behind nutrition, covering aspects of biology, chemistry and physics. You’ll look at the components of food that are given on food labels and consider how these are processed by the body.
There will be some human biology, focusing on the digestive system, including the liver, and the bloodstream, which carries the processed food components to all parts of the body. You will also find out how much energy different sorts of foods supply.
You will have the opportunity to carry out some experiments to find out a little more about the role that acid plays in digestion and how enzymes work, as well as working out how much energy is contained in a single peanut.
Finally, you’ll consider some of the advice that is given about what constitutes a healthy diet and how overconsumption has lead to an obesity epidemic in many countries of the world.
Sam Smidt is one of the lead educators on The Open University’s free online course, The Science of Nuclear Energy. In this post, she discusses whether nuclear power can – or should – have a role in our future.
Decommissioning old coal, gas and nuclear power stations in the 2020s will result in a shortfall of energy in the UK – an “energy gap.” The debate about how best to make up that shortfall really polarises public opinion. Should we invest in nuclear energy? Will renewable energy provide enough to fill the gap?
Many people believe we should commit to renewable energy sources, such as wind, wave and solar energy, which are carbon free and don’t carry any of the risks and concerns about nuclear energy.
But renewables carry their own problems – the supply of energy is intermittent, they are still relatively expensive, and there are lots of issues about where to site wind or solar farms.
So, why are there concerns about nuclear power and are they founded? What are the pros and cons of nuclear power?
The pros and cons of nuclear power
On the plus side, it’s the most straightforward way of reducing the UK greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050. It would offer energy security, meaning we would be less dependent on imported power and we can assure the fuel needed for the full lifetime of a new reactor.
But on the minus side, it’s expensive to build new reactors and investors won’t get a return on their investment for many years and therefore want guarantees about the return they will get.
There are environmental risks which were highlighted recently by the Japanese earthquake and tsunami in 2011. This led Germany to cancel its entire nuclear programme.
Then there are the issues around nuclear waste – while new reactors must have plans for dealing with the waste designed in from the outset, there is still lots of uncertainty about how to deal with the long-term storage of nuclear waste from the last half century.
Should nuclear power solve the energy gap?
So, can nuclear power solve the energy gap? The answer to this is a fairly certain yes, so perhaps a better question is “Should nuclear power solve the energy gap?” The answer to that is much harder to give.
What is clear is that the energy gap should be addressed in more than one way. While nuclear power may be one facet of our future energy portfolio, green, renewable energy sources must continue to be developed and should form an increasing part of our energy portfolio.
The potential for smart meters and increased energy efficiency measures must be exploited faster to change the way we consume electricity. By being smarter in the ways in which we consume energy and diversifying the ways in which we generate energy, we might be able to minimise our dependence on energy sources that we are not comfortable with.
What do you think? Should nuclear power solve the energy gap? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below or using #FLnuclear15. Or to find out more about the intricacies of this debate, join the free online course, The Science of Nuclear Energy.
The 2015 Summer of Learning professional development series is brought to you by Share My Lesson in partnership with content leaders, authors and experienced educators. Over the course of four special days, preK-12 educators and parents have access to dozens of new webinars—for free.
The Professional Development Content Series includes:
Thursday, June 11: Summer Learning
Thursday, June 25: Humanities
Thursday, July 9: STEM
Thursday, July 23: Classroom Foundation and Back to School
How do I register?
Select one or all of the webinars below, and click register.
Each session will last about 50 minutes.
How do I get professional development credit?
Each webinar offers one hour of professional development credit.
The certificate will be available in your webinar portal at the end of each webinar.
You will be required to answer poll questions and complete a survey to receive the certificate.
The Advanced Higher Unit 2 materials for Organisms and Evolution are now available on the NQ Higher Sciences site, no Glow account required. http://bit.ly/1GxouCG
This completes the suite of resources developed for Revised Advanced Higher and suitable for CfE Advanced Higher
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