with mr mackenzie
This week’s episode of Band Goes the Theory was about the Fukushima disaster in Japan. Part of the programme was filmed at Dounreay, where Dallas investigated the methods being used to decontaminate the site. You can watch the part about Dounreay by playing this clip.
The whole programme is available for download using the link below (large download).
This tutorial will help you with adding a line of best fit to your LO3 graph. If you use the linest function, you can extract useful information on gradient and intercept of the line. There are also screenshots to show how error bars can be added to individual points.
Excel Tutorial: Using LINEST function, Plotting a graph, Adding Error Bars
I have added a download link to a short pdf on the use of linest.
You completed the practical aspect of your LO3 task today.
For next week, please process your data so you can show me
This will probably be easier to complete if you use a spreadsheet program such as Excel or OpenOffice. You will need diagrams for the procedure section of your LO3 report. Scanned images of the apparatus are available here.
Here are the answers to your uncertainties exercise. Please compare these to your own solutions and ask me about anything you don’t follow.
Here is an electronic copy of the uncertainty questions you should attempt before Monday. Remember to check which type of combination is appropriate for each situation before starting the question.
What would you do with a great big electromagnet? These people made a film.
F5 2011 RE:PLAY Film Festival. Inductance from Physalia Studio on Vimeo.
What do you make of the film?
I found a brilliant timelapse video on the Popular Science site. It shows the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at work in Chile.
Here are some VLT links to explore
You can get a pdf summary of the VLT from the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the organisation that runs the VLT, by clicking on the download link below.
I’m sure you’ll do your best tomorrow. Remember to check the exam advice for Higher and Standard Grade on BBC Bitesize.
Higher classes – remember my advice to attempt Section B first. 70 of the 90 marks are there and each mark requires less effort than Section A. Aim to leave 35 minutes for the multiple choice questions.
I read yesterday that Rutherford’s model of the atom is 100 years old this year. He presented his findings at a meeting of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society – this link is worth a read.
I dug a little deeper and found that Google Scholar has indexed a copy of Rutherford’s article published in May 1911 (100 years ago this month!) where he explains the scattering of alpha and beta particles by matter. Some of the diagrams are missing and the maths is a little scary but the commentary at the end is interesting. You can download the article using the link at the end of this post.
Professor Martyn Poliakoff made a video about Rutherford and his work.
Rutherford was a Physicist but he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1908, just before he discovered the structure of the atom. It may have been in revenge for his famous quotation
All science is either physics or stamp collecting
There is a video of Rutherford talking to the IEE about his work and I found this modern video showing a recreation of the original experiment on alpha particle scattering.
image by NASA
A few weeks ago we were all ready to look up for an evening sighting of the space shuttle Endeavour as it separated from its external fuel tank while passing over the UK. That launch was delayed but NASA is set to try again today.
Endeavour is the newest vehicle in the shuttle fleet. It was built as a replacement for Challenger. This will be Endeavour’s last mission and its task is to carry the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) up to the International Space Station.
Launch is scheduled for 1.56pm UK time and you can watch it live on NASA TV. Alternatively, you can watch the launch as a webcast from CERN, starting at 1.45pm.
AMS is designed to search for antimatter, a substance first proposed by British Physicist Paul Dirac.
Physicists believe that there should be a balance between matter and antimatter . The problem is that we live in a universe that seems to be made from matter, not matter and antimatter, so the question is…
Particle physicists at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider have an experiment that is looking for an answer to this question. The particle physics research teams at CERN were given the job of building the AMS, which was transferred to the Kennedy Space Centre earlier this year.
The videos below are from CERN’s multimedia library for the AMS project and will give you an idea of the role of AMS. The first film is less than one minute long and designed to act as a trailer for the project. The second is longer (15 minutes) and has several interviews with key project staff.
