PhysicsStop wishes you a Happy Christmas and peaceful 2014, as he ponders whether England will put up a better show than the West Indies. Enjoy the beach, the cricket, the weather, or all three. Back early in the New Year
Continue readingYear: 2013
Evaluating Teaching the hard-nosed numbers way
Recently there's been a bit of discussion in our Faculty on how to get a reliable evaluation of people's teaching. The traditional approach is with the appraisal. At the end of each paper the students get to answer various questions on the teacher's performance on a five-point Likert Scale (i.e. 'Always', 'Usually', 'Sometimes', 'Seldom', 'Never'.) […]
Continue readingAssessment goes wrong
I absolutely have to put this on my blog. I found it in a presentation put together by Ako Aotearoa drawing from the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative. First, the content of the lecture. The Montillation of Traxoline. It is very important that you learn about traxoline. Traxoline is a new form of zionter. It […]
Continue readingHeat and water and making nappies
In the lab, my summer student has been working on a small device to keep a small piece of equipment at a stable temperature. It uses a Peltier device – in essence it's a solid-state heat pump. Pass through current one way, and heat is drawn from the top surface to the bottom; pass current […]
Continue readingThe superphone
Something isn't right. Our laboratory facilities contain a couple of Faraday-shielded rooms. The idea is that electromagnetic radiation can't get in (or, for that matter, out). That means mobile phones shouldn't work in there. And they don't. Mine has no reception at all – others in our research group report either no reception or 'one-bar' […]
Continue readingThermodynamics of learning
Last week I attended a conference on Emergent Learning and Threshold Concepts, here at the University of Waikato. It was a very interesting couple of days. As far as academic conferences go, it was unusual in that it was really cross-disciplinary. We had engineers mixing with physiotherapists, and management consultants with dancers. It certainly was […]
Continue readingWho is doing the observing?
Last week I watched again the highly amusing film "Kitchen Stories". It's hardly a mainstream affair – in fact I feel like editing Wikipedia's meagre entry on it. The scenario is amusing because it's so ridiculous – a group of Swedish scientists is sent off to Norway to observe single men use their kitchens, in […]
Continue readingThe earth’s magnetic field: much more complicated than you might think
At the recent NZ Institute of Physics conference, we were treated to a wonderful description of the earth's magnetic proceses, by Gillian Turner. What makes up the earth's magnetic field? What effect does it have? How is it changing? At first glance the magnetic field of the earth is pretty straightforward. There's a magnetic north […]
Continue readingThe (robot) hand is faster than the eye
Sorry for no blogging in the last week. I've been away and then had the usual bewildering array of tasks to do when I got back. So, to kick off again, here's an amusing video of what one can do with robotics. The application is of course silly, but the high-speed image processing and automation […]
Continue readingIs it OK to bungle the science if the end message is good?
On Saturday morning I held a session for school students preparing to sit the 2013 Scholarship Physics exam. My intention is to help them prepare for this. It's a tough exam, aimed at rewarding the best school students in the various subjects. I talked through the principles behind answering various types of question, e.g. 'estimate' […]
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