Misconceptions in Electricity

When electrical engineer William Beaty was working on the design of an electricity exhibit for the Boston Museum of Science, he decided to check out some elementary school science textbooks in search of good ways to communicate fundamental concepts on the subject.

Bad idea.

What he found was a morass of misconceptions, mistakes and misinformation in one text after another. Not one of the books, he found, even contained what he considered to be a valid definition of what electricity is, much less how it works. And he discovered something else: Even his own understanding of the subject, despite his years in the profession, was flawed; he was still the victim of deeply-help misconceptions that he had learned in grade school.

''The majority of my misconceptions had been specifically taught to me,'' he said. ''[They] were in my science textbooks long ago, and they were still in most modern textbooks.''

For a detailed look at misconceptions in physics and especially electricity, check out William's website here.

Found by Noel Cunningham

Teaching Waves with Google Earth

Google Earth is a huge source of interesting illustrations of various natural phenomena. It can represent a valuable tool for science education, not only for teaching geography and geology, but also physics. This paper suggests ways that Google Earth can be used for introducing the physics of waves.

Click here to download the pdf.

Found by Noel Cunningham

Online Leaving Cert Physics Experiments

This site has a great selection of java simulations for revising many of the experiments on the Leaving Cert physics course.

http://www.mathsphysics.com/Physics/applets.html

Found by Noel Cunningham

How to die when falling into lava

So what will actually happen when the evil villain falls into that burning pit of lava? It turns out that everyone is wrong about how people die when falling into lava. To explain what really happens, here's Erik Klemetti from Wired Science.

“In that scene from Return of the King when Gollum falls into the pit of lava, would he have really just sunk into the lava like that?”

At first, it seemed like an easy question. Well, not so much easy as obvious: yes. However, the more I thought about it, the more I though that pretty much every scene I’ve ever noticed where somebody falls into lava and dies has got to be wrong.

Careers in Physics

Ever wonder where a career in physics will take you?

Check out the Institute of Physics website here as they look at a day in the life of 28 different physics graduates. For more information download the full pdf here.

Surface Tension Exhibit

The current exhibit in the Trinity Science Gallery is SURFACE TENSION, it closes on 20.1.12 so there's still a few weeks to see it before it closes.

The future of water is the subject of tension. Water is both disposable and sacred, a muse for artists and a necessity for life – a source of healing and of conflict. The Earth has abundant water, but only a very small proportion is available for human use. How should this be managed and sustained, and what would a water-scarce future look like?

SURFACE TENSION brings together work by artists, designers, engineers and scientists to explore the future of water, playing on its physical properties, its role in politics and economics, and ways in which it may be harnessed, cleaned, and distributed.

Birth of a Star

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a young star undergoing violent birth. The star, named S106 IR, has a mass of about 15 times that of our sun and lies approximately 2,000 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus, the Swan. Formed from a cloud of gas and dust with more than 25,000 times the sun’s mass, the star is just about to mature and settle down to what astronomers call the main sequence portion of its life, where it will glow steadily like our sun.

But before it grows up, the star is releasing a fierce torrent of ultraviolet radiation, heating up the surrounding cloud to temperatures greater than 18,000 degrees Fahrenheit. This causes the hydrogen gas to glow blue. The cooler, red dust lane in the center partially hides the star from view but it can still be seen shining near the lower part of the image.

Most young stars blast tons of energy and dust, creating gigantic butterfly-wing lobes on their sides like the ones seen here. Within about a million years, the object will end this forceful stage and become a giant blue star, shining brightly as it burns hydrogen into helium.

While its birth has clearly been fierce, the end of its life will be marked by an even more violent explosion: a supernova that will outshine galaxies.
Source: Wired Science