Thomas and Robin hook up for a quick catch up after the Easter holidays. They talk about what they have heard, what they have learned and what they miss about being in school.

Thomas and Robin have heard some strange tales of what is going on in different schools. Virtual learning walks sounds like unnecessary stress at this strange time and what about detentions for the kids if they don’t turn up on-line?

They have had some success with Teams and discuss how they are trying to set work for the children that is practical rather than more worksheets. Thomas is missing equipment for teaching and Robin is missing his colleagues.

On we go in this strange time…

Please share ideas or successes – or indeed questions by messaging us on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/physicstp.bsky.social .  You can also message us via our website contact form on every page of the web site at  the.physicsteachingpodcast.com, or email using the address given in the podcast (if we remember). We are moving away from X but can be found there as @physicstp.

• Season 7: Physics Is Our Business by Miracles of Modern Science.

The music is used under the Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License

Patrick, Thomas and Robin try out zoom to hear how Patrick has been getting on, and then talk through plans for the week. Emma Brown gives us her tips from Shanghai.

• zoom – video conferencing with breakout rooms
• WebAssign – calculation problems
• resources.physicsteachingpodcast.com

Patrick, Thomas and Robin try out zoom. Patrick tells us his successes and failures and gives Thomas the top tip of zoom breakout rooms. Thomas is clueless about what to do with Year 7 and asks for advice. Thomas then chats with Emma Brown in Shanghai who has to teach classes of 70+ online. She has some good advice about using video and ways of checking the kids are engaged. Finally Thomas and Robin report back about how they got on and Thomas gives an update on his collaboration with Helen Reynolds making a resource site for Physics teachers.

Please share ideas or successes – or indeed questions by messaging us on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/physicstp.bsky.social .  You can also message us via our website contact form on every page of the web site at  the.physicsteachingpodcast.com, or email using the address given in the podcast (if we remember). We are moving away from X but can be found there as @physicstp.

• Season 7: Physics Is Our Business by Miracles of Modern Science.

The music is used under the Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License

Thomas and Robin summarise the advice they have been given about teaching remotely.

So much has happened in such a short time, Thomas and Robin decide to talk to some experts about how to support their students remotely. YouTube is a great resource, but also Physics teachers all over the World are cooperating and sharing. The podcast scrapes the surface of this but we get some good advice along the way.

• Physics Online
• Primrose Kitten’s website and her YouTube Channel
• Gorilla Physics
• Science Shorts
• Veritasium

• Physics Pandemic Pedagogy (request access)
• Helen’s Simulations – please register and comment/vote.
• Bernard Rand’s OCS A-Level Resources
• Simulations in Flash from Emma
• edpuzzle
• webwhiteboard simple, free whiteboard
• IoP Spark

Please share ideas or successes – or indeed questions by messaging us on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/physicstp.bsky.social .  You can also message us via our website contact form on every page of the web site at  the.physicsteachingpodcast.com, or email using the address given in the podcast (if we remember). We are moving away from X but can be found there as @physicstp.

• Season 7: Physics Is Our Business by Miracles of Modern Science.

The music is used under the Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License

Fabio Di Salvo joins us to talk about Chat Physics, Physics chat on Twitter. Robin asks for advice about the photoelectric effect.

Covid-19 dominates the news and the podcast is no exception. We got in to and then had cancelled the NSTA talk in the same week. Thomas cheered himself up by redoing the web site with a new archive and a new World map of all the listener locations. Before we talk to Fabio, Robin also

Fabio started Chat Physics for the same reasons as we started the Physics Teaching podcast. A lone physics teacher, he wanted to share ideas with other Physics Teachers. Chat Physics was born, four questions asked and teachers all over the World answering.

• https://twitter.com/chatphysics

Q4: Can the whole of physics be summarised in big ideas?#Chatphysics pic.twitter.com/VUf79SUknS

Please share ideas or successes – or indeed questions by messaging us on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/physicstp.bsky.social .  You can also message us via our website contact form on every page of the web site at  the.physicsteachingpodcast.com, or email using the address given in the podcast (if we remember). We are moving away from X but can be found there as @physicstp.

• Season 7: Physics Is Our Business by Miracles of Modern Science.

The music is used under the Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License

David Buckley joins us to talk about Isaac Physics, the free web-based question bank.

David (@physwithmrb), who started as a Biology teacher, is now head of Physics and uses Isaac weekly to support and challenge his students. Isaac is a rich resource of challenging questions for students and teachers alike.

• Isaac Physics

• All A Level Problem Solving Questions: https://isaacphysics.org/pages/questions_spreadsheet
• GCSE HW + Notes on how to use it https://isaacphysics.org/pages/pre_made_gameboards#gcse_example

Please share ideas or successes – or indeed questions by messaging us on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/physicstp.bsky.social .  You can also message us via our website contact form on every page of the web site at  the.physicsteachingpodcast.com, or email using the address given in the podcast (if we remember). We are moving away from X but can be found there as @physicstp.

• Season 7: Physics Is Our Business by Miracles of Modern Science.

The music is used under the Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License

Keeta Jones from the Acoustical Society of America joins us to talk about the International Year of sound.

Keeta tells us about the way that the ASA are supporting the Year of Sound with a resource pack for teachers and a competition for kids. She also describes the myriad of places that acousticians are found in the workplace.

Thomas and Robin follow up by discussing the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and a recent experiment to explore the sound of the windpipe in an ancient mummy.

• Explore Sound from the ASA
• Talk like an Egyptian
• Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse and Why it Happened

Please share ideas or successes – or indeed questions by messaging us on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/physicstp.bsky.social .  You can also message us via our website contact form on every page of the web site at  the.physicsteachingpodcast.com, or email using the address given in the podcast (if we remember). We are moving away from X but can be found there as @physicstp.

• Season 7: Physics Is Our Business by Miracles of Modern Science.

The music is used under the Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License

Dr Dave Farmer joins the podcast to talk about ways to teach Momentum. Thank you for all your input dear listener!

Dr Dave introduces momentum by putting his body on the line (see below). The main themes are increasing collision time to reduce force, momentum as the quantity of motion, colliding students together and doing experiments.

Love it when the TAs help out with demonstrations (Yr 10 momentum). I've still got a headache. pic.twitter.com/tkKsSxAPqF

• Physics Girl on Momentum (see below) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UHS883_P60
• Nicholas Alkamade falls from a WWI bomber and survives
• Gun recoils
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXOdO25K51M
• Robin and his cats:
  • https://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1143/do-cats-always-land-unharmed-on-their-feet-no-matter-how-far-they-fall/
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-rise_syndrome

Please share ideas or successes – or indeed questions by messaging us on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/physicstp.bsky.social .  You can also message us via our website contact form on every page of the web site at  the.physicsteachingpodcast.com, or email using the address given in the podcast (if we remember). We are moving away from X but can be found there as @physicstp.

• Season 7: Physics Is Our Business by Miracles of Modern Science.

The music is used under the Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License

Thomas and Robin chat about another required practical in UK GCSEs, measuring the density of regular and irregular objects. They run down the rabbit hole of accuracy vs precision before chatting about crazy ways of measuring everyday values.

Physics in the news this week is the recent close up photograph of the surface of the Sun, or “golden nuggets” as Thomas called it. Each pixel is 30km, meaning that if this were the whole sun the photo would be metres across.

The next topic is the everyday required practical in the UK of measuring density. What are the pitfalls? Who doesn’t love a Eureka can? It turns out that Robin is not a fan, and Thomas finds them a tricky proposition too.

A quick foray in to Accuracy vs Precision where Thomas reminisces about WWI (he’s not that old) and tells a story from his past to illustrate the difference.

The final part of the podcast has Thomas telling Robin about how he measured the diameter of ball bearings by dropping them in glycerol as an analogue for the Millikan experiment.

• DKIST Solar Telescope and its image of the Sun
• Scale of the planets and stars video (youtube)

Please share ideas or successes – or indeed questions by messaging us on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/physicstp.bsky.social .  You can also message us via our website contact form on every page of the web site at  the.physicsteachingpodcast.com, or email using the address given in the podcast (if we remember). We are moving away from X but can be found there as @physicstp.

• Season 7: Physics Is Our Business by Miracles of Modern Science.

The music is used under the Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License

Thomas and Robin meet Mark Hannum from the AAPT (American Association of Physics Teachers).

Robin is fascinated to meet Mark Hannum from AAPT. AAPT support teachers in the USA, much the same role that Robin played when he was leading Teacher Support for the IoP. Mark tells us how the AAPT works and also shares his favourite pracitcal – projectiles.

• S01E21: The Rev – with links to Tim’s spreadsheets
• Step Up Physics and
• Step Up Physics Curriculum
• S01E11: Slice the Pendulum with Patrick Kaplo.
• Dr Dave Farmer’s video is linked below.

Love it when the TAs help out with demonstrations (Yr 10 momentum). I've still got a headache. pic.twitter.com/tkKsSxAPqF

Please share ideas or successes – or indeed questions – on our Facebook Page: https://fb.me/physicstp .  You can also message us via our website contact form at the.physicsteachingpodcast.com, Twitter @physicstp, email using  the address given in the podcast (if we remember) or by leaving a voice memo using WhatsApp or Telegram to the phone number in our Twitter profile, +44 7898 814716 (don’t call the number, nobody will answer, just hold down the microphone icon and speak your message or upload an mp3 or ogg). Don’t forget to tell us your name because we may use your audio in a future episode.

The music we use remains One legged equilibrist polka by Circus Homunculus. The music before and after James is Cantina Rag by Jackson F. Smith.

Please share ideas or successes – or indeed questions by messaging us on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/physicstp.bsky.social .  You can also message us via our website contact form on every page of the web site at  the.physicsteachingpodcast.com, or email using the address given in the podcast (if we remember). We are moving away from X but can be found there as @physicstp.

• Season 7: Physics Is Our Business by Miracles of Modern Science.

The music is used under the Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License

Thomas and Robin chat about mocks and how they use them. The podcast ends on a sad note as Thomas talks about a recent family bereavement and asks for donations to Brain research.

For reasons that are explained late in the podcast, Thomas has been feeling very low, and travels to Robin’s house (aka Studio 13) for a chat about Mocks. When and what do we set for the exams and how do we use them?

Robin hurts Thomas’ brain with some entanglement Physics in the News. Thomas then explains his choice of papers for A-Level mocks (the previous Year’s AS paper) and the two teachers discuss using practical work in revision.

• Donate to Brain Research in the name of Thomas’ cousin, Bartholomew Beal

Please share ideas or successes – or indeed questions by messaging us on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/physicstp.bsky.social .  You can also message us via our website contact form on every page of the web site at  the.physicsteachingpodcast.com, or email using the address given in the podcast (if we remember). We are moving away from X but can be found there as @physicstp.

• Season 7: Physics Is Our Business by Miracles of Modern Science.

The music is used under the Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License