with mr mackenzie
podcasts go in this category for the feed to iTunes
By coincidence (pardon the pun!), both Int2 and S3 have reached the stage of investigating total internal reflection at the same time. Here is a photo showing total internal reflection of a laser beam in a tank of water.
I’ve put together a short video showing total internal reflection in a semicircular block and a perspex model of an optical fibre.
total internal reflection from mr mackenzie on Vimeo.
We spent the last lesson of this term taking an old colour television apart. Even if you didn’t have the screwdriver, you were able to see the whole thing close up thanks to Ellie’s webcam and the digital projector. I have edited down the footage to around 2.5 minutes of TV destruction and added some still shots as well.
inside a tv set from mr mackenzie on Vimeo.
Can you use your knowledge of how a tv works to identify some of the parts as they are removed from the box? Leave a comment to tell me what you noticed. I’ll keep them secret until after the holidays so everyone gets a chance to reply. You can download a smaller version of the video from iTunes.
P.S. As we are now in the Easter holidays, I have left you an Easter egg. Who will be the first to find it?
We are heading towards hardcore revision season now. I’ll be at the Easter study school on Monday and Tuesday to help with areas of difficulty. I’m also going to start posting some additional resources, sometimes it helps to get a different person’s perspective on the course.
Let’s start with a set of whole course notes I found online. It’s a pdf that summarises everything in the Higher course. You can use the download button or let iTunes do the downloading (easier option).
See you on Monday!
You should all be well underway with the writing phase of your investigation now. I have attached some guidance from the SQA that is designed to help you with this. Check pages 5-9 of the attached pdf document for detailed information on what is required of you in the final report. Note the word limits and detailed specification of what the marker will be looking for in each section.
Remember that detailed feedback from me will only be possible if I receive your draft report by 3.30pm on Friday. The deadline for submission is the end of the first week back at school after the Easter holiday.
Today we looked at the way in which a tv set produces a picture. We used the Maltese cross tube to produce the effect shown in this photograph.
Then we moved on to the Perrin tube. This allowed us to scan the electron beam across the painted end of the tube using the magnetic field of two Helmholtz coils. Here is the video clip we recorded at the time.
raster scan from mr mackenzie on Vimeo.
I found this video on youtube. It is a good demonstration of electrons behaving like waves or particles, depending on their energy. Can you explain why the electron energy is important here?
There is a second video explaining how the electrons are produced if you are interested. Watch it here.
It’s a few months since we looked at centripetal acceleration in class but I thought I would share this article I found. I wonder how many people would dare to “co-write” a physics paper with Isaac Newton? The article is worth a read and I have attached a download link below.
While we’re talking about centripetal acceleration, Rhett Allain’s blog post that led me to the article is also very interesting.
Mind mapping can be a useful technique for displaying information. We spent some time last week looking at ways to raise the quality of your written responses to describe & explain questions.
The first task generated themes for a mind map and we went on to use the map to help structure your descriptions in a peer assessment task, where you provided feedback to improve each other’s answers. Here is the mind map you produced.
I have attached a copy of the group tasks we used as a pdf file.
Here is your homework exercise on forces, momentum and energy. Please submit your solutions by Thursday 3rd December.
Try working through these kinetic energy problems for yourself. Ignore any reference to Credit/General, I used these files for Standard Grade as well as Intermediate 2 Physics.
