On Christmas Eve, child number 1 spotted a crack in a window. It’s a double-glazed window, and inspection showed that the small, horizontal crack was in the outermost pane. It was perpendicular to the frame, about three-quarters of the way up one side. The origins are a mystery. It MIGHT have something to do with […]
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Last week child number 1 managed to put a hole in a plasterboard (‘gib’) wall. I wasn’t in the room at the time, but I believe it had something to do starting at one end of the house, running down the corridor, through the bedroom doorway, doing a forward flip onto the bed and sliding […]
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In the last few weeks, I’ve been working with some colleagues at the University of Waikato to construct a first-year course introducing Climate Change Science, with a bit of a NZ focus. This would be suitable for students of all backgrounds (not just science students although those would likely be the majority). It’s not that […]
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Yesterday we arrived back in Cambridge after a few days holiday in Auckland, being tourists. We sampled such delights as the unheated hotel swimming pool, the complicated and expensive process of getting on a bus (basically having to find somewhere from which to buy a HOP card, for a non-refundable $10 a card), the completely […]
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It’s a beautiful autumn afternoon, we need to get out of the house, and so our bubble sets off on a bike ride around our local neighbourhood, Cambridge Park. The bikes come out of the garage, and, being really certain we have a front door key, close the garage door again. And off we go. […]
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It’s another warm day, but the breeze isn’t helping much, so off I go to the inviting outdoor swimming pool (banner picture) at the other end of campus. It’s an unheated pool (well, there’s no artificial heat source), which means one thing: It’s going to feel cold when I get in*. I should just jump […]
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This morning I’ve been having a quick look through some documentation from The Ministry of Education on proposed changes to NCEA Level 1 Science. For those not familiar with the NZ secondary education system, a typical student would complete NCEA level 1 at the end of year 11. In this regard, it’s broadly similiar to […]
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I’ve been reading Jules Verne’s novel “Twenty thousand leagues under the sea”, considered as one of the very earliest science fiction stories. In brief, Monsieur Aronnax, and a couple of sidekicks, are taken prisoner by Captain Nemo and his mysterious crew and treated to an underwater voyage around the world on the truly expansive submarine, […]
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Just in case you don’t have a seven-year old boy in your house (in which case this will be obvious) a well-known brand of breakfast cereal here in NZ is currently coming with All-Blacks stats cards. Perfect for finding out your favourite rugby player’s height, number of caps, and how much they can eat for […]
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Hello everyone. It’s been a long while since I was blogging, but I am back again now. The second-half of the year is rather less hectic for me, so I have some time to get back to this. I’ve been considering recently the learning that students have achieved in our first year paper “Physics in […]
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