LED: Light Emitting (whilst) Dancing
This video shows an amazing new type of light show at a recent Coldplay concert. Each audience member is given a wristband containing LEDs. These are controlled centrally so they light up in time to the music – a trully interactive experience. Each wristband has a receiver, which allows data to be sent via radiowaves […]
Lighting the Olympic flame
Image: Jon Candy @Flickr The story The flame that will burn during the London Olympic Games was lit at Olympia, the birthplace of the Ancient Olympics, last Thursday. The torch is lit using the same method as it was at the ancient Olympic Games, a parabolic mirror.
How to see around corners
A simple starter I often used when introducing the topic of light with year 8 was to give them a problem to solve:
Solving the mysteries of the Earth
It was a couple of earth-science stories that caught my attention this week. After the recent earthquakes that shook Japan and New Zealand, predicting where and when the next big seismic event will happen is a holy grail to seismologists.
Kinect the dots – applying knowledge of EM waves
The story The latest must-have gaming gadget was released in the UK last week. Microsoft’s Kinect for the Xbox allows gamers to interact with a games console in a completely new way.
Spooky Science
With Halloween falling at the end of half-term week this year a spooky science lesson is a great way of celebrating the end of (half) term or the beginning of a new one. Teaching idea I have found lots of great ideas from the web but my favourite collection is from Arbour Scientific (weblink below) […]
Seismic shocker
The story This photo shows some of the devastation caused by the 7.4 magnitude earthquake that hit New Zealand’s South Island on September 4th.
Most massive (not biggest) star discovered
The story: Astronomers discovered a huge star in a nearby galaxy last week. R136a1, part of the Large Magellanic Cloud, is estimated to have a mass 265 times more than the sun and to shine around a million times more brightly.
What’s plastic, very annoying and heard at football matches?
Nope, not a CD of the latest repetitive football anthem but the vuvezela – a plastic horn that gets blown by South African football fans at matches. This instrument/weapon of torture is fast becoming one of the most talked about subjects in this year’s World Cup. The reason for the scientific interest is that it […]
Mobile phones: should we be worried?
A story that has appeared a lot in British press this week is the report on findings of a major study into the link between mobile phone use and brain cancer.