Twitter can be a great source of professional development, inspiration and collaboration for teachers. Just the other day I was looking for a hands-on activity with which to demonstrate elastic potential energy and energy transfer and so I tweeted for ideas. Here are some of the wonderful suggestions I received from the Twittersphere. Thank you everyone for your contributions!
Image credit: youaremyfave.com. Full instructions available here
The half-life of a radioactive substance is the time it takes for the number of parent nuclei in a sample to halve, or for the count rate from the original substance to fall to half its initial level. Half-life is random and it is impossible to know which individual parent nucleus will be the next to decay. LEGO and M&Ms can be used to model this random decay while also negating the need for students to handle radioactive materials.
Students start with 100 M&Ms (other sweets can be used so long as there are two distinct sides e.g. Skittles) and tip them into a tray. Record the number of M&Ms which have landed face-up (these represent parent nuclei which have decayed). Remove these ‘decayed’ nuclei and tip the remaining M&Ms into a second tray. Once again count the ones that have ‘decayed’ and repeat until all of the M&Ms have gone. Use the data to plot a half-life curve.
Students throw 60 2×2 LEGO bricks into a tray and remove all of the bricks that land studs-up (these represent parent nuclei which have decayed). Stack these bricks together to show the activity i.e. the number of decays per throw. Throw the remaining LEGO bricks and again remove those that have ‘decayed.’ Stack these into a second column and place this next to the first to quite literally build an activity vs. throws bar chart. Repeat until all of the LEGO bricks have gone.
A couple of nice activities using Oreo cookies (or in my case, cheaper alternatives).
Explain that the upper cookie is the lithosphere, the creamy filling is the asthenosphere, and the lower cookie is the lower mantle. Begin by simulating the motion of the rigid lithosphere plate over the softer asthenosphere by sliding the upper cookie over the cream. Then break the top cookie in half and simulate a divergent plate boundary by sliding the two cookie halves apart.
Push one cookie half under the other to make a convergent plate boundary.
Finally, simulate a transform plate boundary by sliding the two cookie halves past one another. Students should feel and hear that the two ‘plates’ do not glide smoothly past one another (thus modelling the earthquakes that occur at transform fault lines such as San Andreas).
Simply remove the top cookie to reveal the creamy filling beneath. Scrape away and shape the cream to show the phases of the moon. Students should draw the relative location of the Earth and label the phases. Great as a revision tool or plenary.
There is no need to fear the Van de Graaff generator (although advice from CLEAPSS should always be followed). However, a fun alternative to charging up students is to stack aluminium pie cases on top of the metal dome and watch them fly off in all directions as the electrostatic charge accumulates.
This is a great activity for introducing students to drawing force diagrams and resultant force. I have taken the idea directly from TES (the hugely popular original is available here) but I have made my own version in order to emphasise that the length of the arrow shows the size of the force. Obviously any music can be used to accompany it but I have always found that Gangnam Style works well (some of the students even do the dance moves as they jump about!).
Start the music, start the presentation and then jump in the direction of the resultant force. Have fun!
Simple to build and highly effective in illustrating transverse wave motion. Full instructions are available from the excellent STEM Learning website.
I have just started the topic of Motion with my Year 9 students and used an obstacle course as an active way to introduce speed, distance and time equations.
The students set up an obstacle course in the sports hall (balance beams, hopscotch, cones, a wall to climb over etc.) Then, working in pairs, one member of each team tackled the course whilst the other timed them and recorded how long it took to complete each section. The students also recorded the length of each section using a measuring tape e.g. balance beam = 3m, hoops = 8m.
Now that the students knew the distance and the time taken, they could work out the speed at which they completed each obstacle. Finally, the students were asked to plot a distance-time graph (which lead nicely onto the follow-up lesson in which we looked at motion graphs using DynaKars).
Canva is a free online graphic design tool which can be used to make beautiful posters, infographics, presentations and many other things. It is extremely simple to use and features a vast library of templates, fonts and photographs to choose from.
My AS level biology students have recently used Canva to create eyecatching infographics summarising the structure and properties of biological molecules. I think they look great!
These are a great way of summarising the properties of elements, radiation, biological molecules etc. in a format that the students instantly recognise and can relate to.
If It's Green Or Moves 