Teaching ScienceHelp for trainee Science teachers

Here’s a nice simple resource that could be used to teach Sound and Waves in Science. There are several sites that show oscilloscope traces when looking at sounds, and this is another one. It’s produced by Aartpack, and they call it a Digital Theramin – named after the staple musical instrument of 50s sci fi movies

What I like about this one is its simplicity. Plus it would work well on an interactive whiteboard to show how the shape of the sound “wave” changes as the pitch and volume changes.

Click the Menu button to show the optionss, and set it so that the Sine Waveform is set to a value, and the other 3 are turned off (no scale), like this:

Then if you click anywhere on the screen, a sine wave will be drawn and a note will be played (turn up your speakers!)

If you drag your finger/pen to the right the note will get higher and the waves will get closer together. Likewise drag your finger/pen to the left and the pitch will get lower.

If you drag up the screen the note will get louder, drag it down the screen and the note will get quieter. The amplitude of the sine wave will reduce.

This would be very nice to demonstrate sound waves at KS2 or Ks3.

The only drawback is that there is no way to set it up so it works without having to touch the board. I’d like to have seen a mode where you could place a button on the screen, and move that button up/down left/right to change the note. That way you could let go of the board to address the class and keep the note playing/displayed. I’m pleased to see it will resize to full-screen so you can make the resource fit the entire whiteboard.

There are more complicated settings that you can play with if you want to do some more advanced stuff, but the sine wave feature alone makes it a very handy bookmark to have for your Sound lesson! You can access the digital theramin/oscilloscope here.

There are other interactive resources on the Aartpack website too. It’s worth looking around the whole site to see what they have for other subjects too.

Great clip from last nights “Bang Goes the Theory” – a water powered jetpack

and remember, don’t try this at home.

A simple rocket made from a coke bottle, 1/4 filled with water and powered by a bicycle pump. (Can buy the kit from Hawkins Bazaar for about £12.99 here)

Great for talking about Forces. Make sure you do it somewhere where there’s a lot of space

Update – from www.Rokit.com

Science Education: Using ROKIT to “Bring Science Alive”

• A precision water rocket that self launches at a pre-determined pressure (2BAR).
• Providing the capability of repeatable experiments.
• Schools, colleges and Science Advisors throughout the world are using this exciting kit to demonstrate Laws of Motion.
• Rokit is a valuable visual tool for all levels of Science Education.

ROKIT for Primary Education demonstrates the principles of rocket propulsion, trajectory, streamlining and basic aerodynamics. It is also used in fun education projects such as ROKIT Golf, Space Travel etc.

ROKIT for Secondary Education is a precision water rocket that enables accurate and repeatable experiments to be performed. It can be used to measure and study velocity and acceleration, force, trajectory, thrust and drag.

About Rockets

A squid propels itself by filling its body with water and ejecting it backwards in order to move forwards. This is the principle used by rocket engineers. Space rockets use fuels that are burned in a chamber shaped rather like a bottle, with the neck pointing backwards. The burning fuel produces a large quantity of gas that is further expanded by the heat generated and this is ejected through the neck (or nozzle) of the “bottle” (normally called the combustion chamber) at a very high velocity, propelling the rocket in the opposite direction.

The ROKIT, like the squid, uses water as the driving agent and compressed air instead of heat to provide the energy.

For the technically minded the pressure in the bottle at launch (just before the brass bung releases) is about 18 x 104 N/m2 (or about 25 psi). The water is forced through a nozzle with a cross sectional area of about 1cm2 and this produces a theoretical thrust of about 18 Newtons (about 3.9lbs) at launch. As the water is ejected the ROKIT gets lighter resulting in an increased acceleration or ‘g’ force. This increasing ‘g’ force is one of the more unpleasant aspects of space flight that astronauts have to endure; a rocket leaving the earth’s atmosphere would have to keep up this increasing acceleration for some time. The ROKIT expels its charge of water in about 1 second so DON’T WORRY, IT’S NOT LIKELY TO GO INTO ORBIT!

Here are some useful sites to supplement the work we did on Electricity yesterday.

Firstly – the Flash file with questions about circuits came from the Essex e-gfl site. You can see it here.

A battery with one bulb connected is your standard to compare things to. Electricity flows from one end of the battery to the other, flowing through the bulb as it goes, making the bulb light up.

Adding a second bulb in series will increase the total resistance in the circuit. The bulbs will be dimmer than the single bulb.

Adding a second bulb in parallel is a different situation. You have added a second pathway for the electricity to flow, The resistance is greater than a single bulb, but is is not as high as the two bulbs in parallel. The two bulbs will be brighter.

A “cars on the highway” analogy may help explain the distinction: think of a wide highway narrowing to a one-lane bridge to cross a river. Now imagine that in order to get rid of traffic jams, the highway department builds another one-lane bridge over the river. The “resistance” (in this case analogous to the width), of both bridges stays the same, but the amount of “current” or traffic that can cross the river has increased, so the overall “resistance” of the entire system has decreased. Taken from here.

In a series circuit, each bulb you add will make the brightness of the bulbs dimmer and dimmer

In a parallel circuit, the brightness of the bulbs does not change with the addition of more bulbs (but if you added many parallel circuits, eventually all of the bulbs would dim down as you approached the capacity of the battery)

This page from the BBC KS2 Bitesize site is pretty useful.

The GCSE Bitesize page may help explain things to you too.

It’s also worth looking at is this presentation from Skool.co.uk

More Links and Resources

Here are some more links that hopefully will help with teaching circuits

The free circuit builder Crocodile Elementary is now called Yenka Basic Circuits, and you can get it here. This will let you build circuits to your heart’s content!

From BBC Science Clips, try these resources:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/scienceclips/ages/6_7/electricity.shtml

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/science/activities/conductors.shtml)

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/science/activities/changing_circuits.shtml)

Other Links

Make an Electric Circuit Online

BBC Learning Zone – Electricity Videos

The Blobz Guide to Circuits

PhET Circuit Builder

Cleo Circuit World

For a quick 10 minute preview, that explains some aspects of circuits. Go to Furry Elephant, and choose series or parallel circuits. It literally only allows you 10 minutes though.

Link to other Links Pages

E=TC3 6G Changing Circuits Page

E=TC3 4f Circuits and Conductors Page

TopicBox – Electricity

e-gfl Electricity resources

The Institute of Physics has produced some useful KS2 PowerPoint presentations which you can use to introduce different physics concepts to your class.

As well as PowerPoints there are suggested activities that you can try out.

You can access the resources here. Click on each topic to see the resources available.

To answer another one of the questions you submitted. Trying to explain why the brightness of bulbs in a circuit changes can be tricky. It can be helpful to imagine different analogies/models to explain what is happening.

A very nice place to start is this presentation from Skool.co.uk

A battery with one bulb connected is your standard to compare things to. Electricity flows from one end of the battery to the other, flowing through the bulb as it goes, making the bulb light up.

Adding a second bulb in series will increase the total resistance in the circuit. The bulbs will be dimmer than the single bulb.

Adding a second bulb in parallel is a different situation. You have added a second parthway for the electricity to flow, The resistance is greater than a single bulb, but is is not as high as the two bulbs in parallel. The two bulbs will be brighter.

A “cars on the highway” analogy may help explain the distinction: think of a wide highway narrowing to a one-lane bridge to cross a river. Now imagine that in order to get rid of traffic jams, the highway department builds another one-lane bridge over the river. The “resistance” (in this case analogous to the width), of both bridges stays the same, but the amount of “current” or traffic that can cross the river has increased, so the overall “resistance” of the entire system has decreased. Taken from here.

In a series circuit, each bulb you add will make the brightness of the bulbs dimmer and dimmer

In a parallel circuit, the brightness of the bulbs does not change with the addition of more bulbs (but if you added many parallel circuits, eventually all of the bulbs would dim down as you approached the capacity of the battery)

This page from the BBC KS2 Bitesize site is pretty useful.

The GCSE Bitesize page may help explain things to you too.

More Links and Resources

Here are some more links that hopefully will help with teaching circuits

The free circuit builder Crocodile Elementary is now called Yenka Basic Circuits, and you can get it here. This will let you build circuits to your heart’s content!

From BBC Science Clips, try these resources:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/scienceclips/ages/6_7/electricity.shtml

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/science/activities/conductors.shtml)

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/science/activities/changing_circuits.shtml)

Other Links

Make an Electric Circuit Online

BBC Learning Zone – Electricity Videos

The Blobz Guide to Circuits

PhET Circuit Builder

Cleo Circuit World

For a quick 10 minute preview, that explains some aspects of circuits. Go to Furry Elephant, and choose series or parallel circuits. It literally only allows you 10 minutes though.

Link to other Links Pages

E=TC3 6G Changing Circuits Page

E=TC3 4f Circuits and Conductors Page

TopicBox – Electricity

Another one of your questions was about Day, Night and Seasons. I’ll try and link to some good animations and guides about this that are already on the web.

The Earth is always lit from one side by the Sun. The side that is in shadow is in Nighttime, the side that is lit by the Sun is in Daytime. If you follow one spot on the Earth such as London, as the Earth spins it will eventually move from night into day and then later back into night time again. From where we are standing it looks like it is the Sun that’s moving instead.

You can see what the view from space above London is like right now with this viewer.

You can see what’s happening on this animation

http://www.childrensuniversity.manchester.ac.uk/interactives/science/earthandbeyond/dayandnight.asp

To add to the confusion: The Earth is slightly tilted on its axis. This means at some times of the year, the Northern Hemisphere is tilted slightly towards the Sun (Summer) and at other times of the year it is tilted away from the Sun (Winter). At the Spring and Autumn Equinox the two hemispheres are neither tilted away or towards the sun.

There are some more diagrams on this page which illustrate this.

Here’s a nice animation of the Earth going around the Sun, showing the effect of the tilt on the seasons.

http://mesoscale.agron.iastate.edu/agron206/animations/01_EarthSun.html

The tilt also affects the length of a day on Earth. You can explore that with this animation

http://www.childrensuniversity.manchester.ac.uk/interactives/science/earthandbeyond/sunrisesunset.asp

In the winter the Sun rises later and sets earlier. We have short days and long nights. In the Summer the sun rises earlier and sets later, we have long days and shorter nights. At the Spring and Autumn equinox the length of day and night is equal (equi = equal nox=night)

More Info

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/solarsystem/earth/solsticescience.shtml

http://www.boutichesaid.cv.dz/Earth/EarthLight/EarthLight.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasons

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/seasons.html

http://www.fourmilab.ch/earthview/vplanet.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/science/revision_bites/earth_sun_moon.shtml

Microsoft have finally released the public beta of their World Wide Telescope project, and I just had to write about it. It’s a must for anyone who has to teach about space, or just anyone interested in astronomy.

Basically, its Microsoft’s version of Google Earth/ Google Sky and if you’ve used the Google version in the past then you’ll pick this up very easily.

The software provides a virtual planetarium and lets you study the night sky with great detail. Some of the images are astounding. You can also switch the view to study planets and moons such as Jupiter and Io.

When looking at the stars, right clicking will bring up a star identifier which tells you the name of the star (if known) and some information about it. You can even link direct to the relevant wikipedia page.

Maybe a quick activity would be to search for their star sign (I looked up Aries) and find the names of the stars in the constellation. Maybe even find out how far away they are from Earth.

You can also point the camera downwards and study the Earth instead just like Google Earth, although not in as high resolution. A nice feature is the Earth at Night view which shows just where all the populated areas are. Interesting to use for Geography perhaps?

This is highly recommended and would be an excellent piece of software for anyone who has to teach about the Earth and space. Download it from here.

Firstly, it’s had to google this without getting lots of hits for classic Pink Floyd albums. Secondly, strictly speaking it’s the *far* side of the moon. It’s not always dark because sometimes it is facing directly at the Sun and is well lit.

Anyway, the question relates to the fact that Moon always keeps the same face facing towards the Earth (and so the same face pointing away). This down to two important facts.

1. The moon rotates on its on axis, it takes approximately 28 days to make one full rotation

2. The moon orbits around the earth. It takes approximately 28 days to make one full orbit.

In the animation below, I have coloured the moon to make it clearer. This is the view from above as it rotates.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.scittscience.co.uk/media/moonrotate.swf" height="500" width="500" /]

View Full Screen

As the moon rotates, it is also travelling around the Earth. The Moon has become locked into a pattern – the time it takes to orbit the Earth is the same as the time it takes to make one full rotation – approximately 28 days.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.scittscience.co.uk/media/moonorbit.swf" height="500" width="500" /]

View Full Screen

As you can see, as the moon travels around the Earth, it is also rotating. The Red/Yellow face is always kept facing towards the Earth. If we were standing on the Earth looking at the Moon we would only see the Red/Yellow face. We would never be able to see the Blue/Green face.

Other Animations

http://www.edumedia-sciences.com/a213_l2-earth-moon-system-1.html

More Moon Information

The Nine Planets

Bad Astronomy

Earth and Moon

Wikipedia

Mundesley School Space Page

What happens when you drop a heavy object and a light object at the same time? Well they should hit the ground at exactly the same time. This is because the pull of gravity is the same on each one, and so they accelerate at the same rate.

On Earth it’s hard to visualise this since air resistance also gets involved – and so if you drop a hammer and a feather the feather floats down slower than the hammer.

On the moon, there is no air, so air resistance does not affect the result. One of the experiments carried out by the Apollo astronauts on the moon was to demonstrate a hammer and feather drop and as you can see, without air resistance both the hammer and feather hit the ground at the same time.