Combating climate change - the physics

There is considerable physics underpinning developments in this field. Identifying it and explaining it would be a good exercise for students...
For example these reports:
Climate change: Five cheap ways to remove CO2 from the atmosphere (BBC)
Climate change: Low cost, low energy cooling system shows promise (BBC)

More podcasts

The Physics World Science Podcast is a good weekly podcast from Physics World magazine.

Weekly Space Hangout Audio is also good for up-to-date space news.

And finally there is the more advanced Physics Frontiers podcast for those really into Physics at the university or post-grad level.

Amateur Astronomy Association of Guyana

This local group has recently become active complete with website and Facebook page. According to the website:

"AAAG has a wide range of planned activities: from camping trips under a dark sky retelling the story of our current scientific understanding of the universe, to guided night sky tours of celestial objects, and future events featuring education workshops and lectures in astronomy; we will offer a bit of everything for everyone."

Some good science podcasts

Here are a few I have listened to regularly for the past few years:

Science Hour (BBC) - "Science news and highlights of the week" - a weekly report of five or so good science stories.

Science in Action (BBC) - "...brings you all the week's science news" - shorter than the above, some overlap but good additional stories.

and a more recent find:

Astronomy Cast - More technical than those above, each episode has a theme. Good science plus astronomy updates.

These can easily be found using standard podcast apps.

A nice physics blog

An interesting physics blog by PBS  with links to more physics blogs. According to the blog:

"What is The Nature of Reality? It’s a blog, and it’s pretty much the biggest question we could think of. "

Plenty of videos.

Khan Academy

I am sure you have heard of Khan Academy. I took another look recently and it seems to have been upgraded.

Definitely a good source of learning videos for school level physics.

CXC Physics on-line resources update

Following changes the CXC website now offers syllabuses and past papers as downloadable ebooks through their 'store'. Past papers cost money to get but the syllabus has a cost of $0 which means it can be downloaded free but it is neccessary to create an account and go through the shopping cart thing.

Cosmology

A good introduction to the subject!

Closing off modeling climate change

Have just finished the course at EdX which I mentioned in two previous posts (first, second).

As part of an assignment I looked at historical temperatures for Georgetown and Timerhi. Georgetown has one of the most complete sets of data for this part of the world. Here is a graph showing the annual average temperatures (degrees Celsius) from 1850 (Georgetown orange, Timerhi green). It is clear that there is an upward trend which has accelerated from about 1950. The trend for Georgetown is about 0.2 degrees rise per decade and the mean temperature seems to have risen by about one degree since 1950. Global temperatures show similar results.

One closing topic was short-term mitigation - what we can do now to reduce the problem. The lecturer pointed out that there are things that can be done such as reduce heat loss by homes in cold countries, change agricultural practices to trap more carbon and increase energy efficiency of transportation. Another is to change our life style and diet.

It seems to me more than ever what we need is better working together to tackle world problems and less short-term politics.

More on modeling climate change

Am still doing this course as mentioned in the previous post. Heavy going at times with topics such as:

• greenhouse gas physics
• atmospheric feedbacks
• carbon cycle
• perturbed carbon cycle
• solar and glacial cycles

Most weeks have models to set up using spreadsheets or programming. Some assignments require access to one or more of the Climate and Carbon Cycle Models available from University of Chicago.

One interesting prediction - if we stopped producing carbon dioxide today it would take the earth thousands of years to recover, may be hundreds of thousands. And we would not feel the full effect of what we have produced so far for hundreds of years during which the ice sheets would continue to melt and the sea level to rise...

MOOC - climate models

Am now doing another course at EdX called "Modeling Climate Change". Again this involves quite a bit of physics. The focus really does seem to be on modelling and so far seems to be a good introduction to some serious computational physics. A good course for linking with physics at the University of Guyana. More next month.

More MOOC

I recently finished the course "Imagining Other Earths" at Coursera and am currently doing "Greatest Unsolved Mysteries of the Universe" from EdX. Both involve some physics especially the second and are given by experts working in the field who are also good teachers. Neither are that easy but good advanced level Physics students should be able to cope.

The first is wide ranging with exoplanets as the main theme but including the solar system, star formation and astrobiology along the way. There are good video lectures and assignments requiring mostly writings short reports. Physics includes such things as inverse square law and Stephan's Law.

The second is more focused on astrophysics and cosmology with more short but good lectures and many short questions and assignments requiring calculations or estimation. More work.
Both have proved very worthwhile and a great learning experience. Recommended.

Some Physics MOOC courses

There are now quite a few such courses which look really useful for high school and university students. Here are a just few I noted below at random. I have not done any but may be a reader has and can comment. Coursera had many (35 matching PHYSICS) and EdX even more (95 matching PHYSICS). Reviewing so many is beyond me!

Coursera
Introductory Physics I with Laboratory - "Explore motion in the real world using modern tools and techniques (video capture and analysis, computer modeling) guided by fundamental physics principles."

Energy and the Earth - "Learn how all energy systems depend on the finite resources of the Earth, and how this relationship can provide a unique “big picture” perspective on energy supply."

Introduction to Electronics - "This course introduces students to the basic components of electronics: diodes, transistors, and op amps. It covers the basic operation and some common applications."

Introduction to Thermodynamics: Transferring Energy from Here to There - "In this course, you will learn how to characterize the energy state of a system and the mechanisms for transferring energy from one system to another. These are the tools necessary to understand stationary and transportation power systems from small scale, like batteries, to large scale, like nuclear power plants."

EdX
Preparing for the AP Physics 1 Exam - "This is a challenging course designed to help high school students prepare for the AP* Physics 1 test. The course covers all of the material for the test, supported by videos, simulations, and online labs. Topics include motion, forces, gravitation, energy and momentum, rotation, harmonic motion, and an introduction to electric charge and basic circuits." This seems to be part of a series.

Electronic Interfaces: Bridging the Physical and Digital Worlds - "Learn by doing: analyze, design, and build electronic interfaces between sensors and a micro-controller to build a robot or your own creation in this hands-on lab course."

Another good physics blog for teachers

The blog Quantum Progress  is a blog by a teacher for teachers. Apart from the main blog see also the other sections. The section 'More than a blog roll' is a review of many other physics teaching blogs - very valuable. I have not had time to read far - too much.

Here are a few posts of particular interest from the main blog:

Intro Physics: Essential Understandings for Energy and Rough Outline

Using smartphone apps to take physics day to the next level

Particle Physics

I came across a video (see right) of a very good talk by Sean Carroll called "Particles, Fields and The Future of Physics". A good general non-mathematical introduction to the subject including some illuminating comments about the Higgs particle. About an hour in length and worth it.

I should say that this is more A-level or university level than high school!

Also worth mentioning here is a short but more technical article on the same topic "The Physics of a New Generation".

More resources - TES

Another goldmine of useful resources for teachers from the Times Educational Supplement (TES):

"Free physics resources: physics lesson plans, physics worksheets, physics revision, physics teaching" 

Of course they cover much else besides Physics too.

The Physics Classroom website

A great resource for teachers.
This site seems to have some of everything a teacher or student might want including teaching resources, questions, labs etc. Too much to describe. Every teacher needs to check it out.
For the US curriculum but that is not a big problem.
Mainly the work of one very dedicated teacher - Tom Henderson of Glenbrook South High School.

Some more Caribbean Physics sites

In a previous post we looked at a couple of interesting sites for teachers. In this post we look at a few more. There are many sites offering tuition of some kind but these are difficult to evaluate and have been omitted for now.

University sites - there are the University of the West Indies Physics Departments at Mona (Jamaica), at St Augustine (Trinidad) and at Cave Hill (Barbados). All are interesting sites to browse around in. There is also the University of Guyana site although there is currently no degree program.

Another interesting item is an article called "Meet 5 world-renowned Caribbean scientists" on Caribbean Current". One is Guyanese (Dr Chang-Yen) and two are physicists. There are of course many more but making a list would be both challenging and contentious.

I also came across this useful physics blog "Science Zone Jamaica".

There are not a lot of Caribbean physics sites but I will keep looking.

Middle and high school resources

The American Physical Society has some nice resources for primary schools to download including neat colouring books - could be used at home on rainy season days. The high school page includes a short movie about Einstein.

Online electronics course from MITx

MIT has long been in the forefront of online education and open learning. They have now, with Harvard University, launched MITx with a free online course on electronics. See this report.
It looks to be of great value to those living where there are no accessible local equivalents. It is a university level course and hard work will be required! Definitely of interest to those doing Physics at A-level or university.