Please find below a variety of physics/science related stuff that I use in my day-to-day teaching. Note that a couple of these resources are AQA specific*: Popular physics/science YouTube channels …
Source: Web Resources | Ramblings of a physics teacher…
It’s always good to have a list of handy websites to go through at a later point!
Source: Create a DNA Fingerprint
Found this really easy to use DNA fingerprinting “game” I guess you could call it. It directs you through each step to perform the DNA fingerprinting and then you do the matching up at the end to find out the culprit. Each step also tells you the science behind the step and it won’t let you do it wrong! It also doesn’t tell you when you’re wrong though!
This would be good fun as part of revision or during a lesson with a different pupil trying each step, discussing them and then seeing who guesses right with the culprit. Very easy for most levels to understand.
This is how you can make some awesome marbleized looking Easter Eggs quickly and easily, without a lot of mess and spending a lot of money. Here’s what
Source: How to Make Shaving Cream Easter Egg Dye
I found a link on pinterest the other day that I just thought “Ooh, eggs and shaving foam”, pinning it for another day. Then I thought, let’s actually look at the method! It looks so, so simple. We’ve been planning on trying to make natural dyes (raspberries, coffee, etc) to paint some eggs here in school, but this method is much simpler and easier to put together.
In fact, I’ve put the ingredients on my shopping list to try at home!
Happy Easter!
Corrosion Demos This page has an amazing demonstration for corrosion, incredibly visual and fast to show in a classroom setting. This is a very good way to show corrosion actively happening rather than the usual nails in large conical flasks (which does look impressive over time, but not on the short term). Showing corrosion with nails in a flask also tends to ruin some of the glassware so can be pretty wasteful, petri dishes are supposed to be disposable! The link also includes the student sheet and slides for teaching with.
I can’t wait to try this one!
Here’s a handy video showing how Sankey diagrams can be used in Science with regards to energy, power, efficiency, etc. There’s explanation as to how the diagram works (useful vs wasted energy) and about the energy involved. Very useful for AQA Energy and Efficiency.
Super Glue Fingerprint Fuming.
This is the instructable page of all 8 steps showing how to use superglue to capture fingerprints with very simple, everyday equipment. I especially like the computer editing aspect at the end, the 8th step, and wonder how creative someone could be to incorporate this into more of a STEAM project than STEM.
Let me know if you have any arty fingerprints you’ve done yourself!
Burning a ping pong ball experiment – YouTube.
We showed this to our teachers. They found it amazing. This very simple demonstration would be perfect as a starter and also very visual on an Open Evening.
E is for Explore!: Red Bull and Milk Reaction.
What happens when you add Red Bull to milk in a 1:1 ratio?
What about vinegar and milk in the same ratio?
Change the type of milk from whole, to semi, to skimmed!
Why does any of this happen?
This simple, quick and clean demonstration is perfect for an introduction to States of Matter, to get brains thinking on an Open Evening or as a mini experiment for a STEM session.
Definitely one to try out! And easily performed and explained at home.
Biodomes Engineering Design Project: Lessons 2-6 – Activity – www.TeachEngineering.org.
This is a fantastic resource for designing a bio-dome, excellent for studying ecosystems, specific environments and engineering (there’s also a nice little bit of recycling of plastic bottles involved). The webpage also details how to approach a number of lessons teaching with regards to the bio-dome that students can build. There is also a Bio-dome workbook in pdf that can be downloaded from the page, a full list of materials needed, an introduction with extra vocab section and a simple to use instruction on how to build a simple model bio-dome.
The lesson plans given by Teach Engineering break down different things to look at/study within the bio-dome (energy flow, plants, animals and then decomposers), these could easily be adapted to fit what a teacher specifically wanted or to fit different timescales, you wouldn’t need to add plants, animals and decomposers over 3 weeks unless it helps to establish each one first. Maybe that’s what a school technician is for, hehe!
I think it would be fascinating for a class (or STEM group) to do this over perhaps a few weeks with maybe one built bio-dome for everyone, to see the effects of the bio-dome. The website recommends roughly 5 hours of “lesson” time, but however much of it could be done outside of a lesson to speed learning up.
A video for plant adaptation, good for unit B2e: Adaptation.
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