Another New Scientist Article

[ffutures]

Found another article:

The Great Brownian Motion Swindle

This is now obsolete, of course - with microscope cameras linked to projectors it's now easy to show the experiment to a whole class.

I think there was one more article, but I can't find it - maybe they rejected it.

Forgot to say that if a password screen comes up on either article just press cancel a few times - it goes away eventually.

Comments

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Thinking back, almost all of the experiments I was witness to at school had at least some element of the emperors new clothes about them.

Mind you, saying that, I don't think we once got to play with a microscope, or anything more complicated than ticker tape.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

The other one that used to be a bastard was the cloud chamber display of radioactivity - again, using a camera means that you can demo it once so that the whole class sees it when it's still working well.

[jonnynexus.livejournal.com]

That was a really interesting article. And pretty cool to have something in New Scientist.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

It used to be pretty easy to get published in a lot of places, before technology and computer journalism got really glossy and they started commissioning everything. I must have had articles in six or eight computer mags back in the 90s.

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

I read this, and I confess my first thought was "must be nice to have a technician". In Canada science teachers must look after the equipment, as well as teach the classes. The main reason I don't do more labs is that every lab means hours of finding and repairing equipment, making solutions (for chemistry), and so on -- all on my own time and with no budget.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thanks to Lord Nuffield Britain has always tended to emphasise (possibly over-emphasise) practical science skills. Nearly all science lessons are in labs, with most lessons including a practical of some sort, unless they're doing something (such as astrophysics) where that isn't really possible. Thanks to Ken Livingstone, back in his GLC / ILEA days, London schools tend to have enough technicians to service these lessons.

For example, a large component of the marks in A-Level Biology is coursework in which the students have to design and carry out an investigation over two weeks or so, with vast quantities of equipment and solutions needed pretty much all the time. Physics do something similar. A-Level chemistry has lots of assessed practicals.

Until this year we only had two technicians and were seriously over-worked. Right now we have three for seven labs and about 250 periods of science a week (including some in the evenings), and we're possibly slightly under-worked. But some time this year or early 2009 we have to reorganise into ten labs on two sites, with more A-Level lessons, and won't be getting any more technicians. That is NOT going to be fun.

[trinfaneb.livejournal.com]

That sounds like alot of work. Does the emphasis on lab work seem to pay off in things like more science students in universities?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I doubt it - my impression is that we have the same problems with low uptake of science as other countries.