Physics News from the AIP No 2, Term 1 2005



VicPhysics News: Term 4, No 1 2016

Dear ,

The Nobel Physics Prize was announced last night - and it wasn't for gravitational waves! Unit 3 Course Planning Days are coming up in late November and we now have a Facebook page and a Twitter account. There is also a reminder about due dates for student competitions.

Table of Contents

1. Vicphysics Facebook page and Twitter account

2. Due Dates for Student Competitions

a) Physics Video and Photo Contests entries are due now.

b) Young Physicists Tournament team lists are due by Friday 11th November

c) Physics Investigation Poster Competition entries are due by Friday 11th November

d) Acoustics Investigation Competition entries are due by Friday 28th October

3. Physics Video Gallery - A find from

4. 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics - The Secrets of Exotic Matter

5. Forthcoming events for Students and the General Public

a) International Master Class in Particle Physics, 8:45 - 4:45pm, 25th October, South Oakleigh College

6. Forthcoming events for Teachers

a) Dark matter: A Southern Hemisphere Perspective, 7pm, Thursday, 13th October, Royal Society of Victoria

b) Advancing Science & Engineering through Laboratory Learning, 9am - 3pm, 21st October, Geelong

c) Advancing Science & Engineering through Laboratory Learning, 9am - 3pm, 28th October, Mooroolbark

d) Free ANSTO Teacher Professional Development Day, 10th November, Australian Synchrotron

e) VCE Physics Unit 3 Course Planning Days, 29th, 30th November, University High School

7. Physics News from the Web

a) In praise of Descartes

b) When a water slide goes wrong

c) Women of NASA - LEGO kit?

d) The Physics of Sport Roundup

The next meeting of the Vicphysics Teachers' Network will be at 5pm on Tuesday, 11th October at the University of Melbourne. All teachers are welcome to attend this or any other meeting. If you would like to attend, please contact Vicphysics at vicphys@

Regards,

Frances Sidari, Jane Coyle, Barbara McKinnon and Dan O'Keeffe.

The executive of the VicPhysics Teachers' Network

1. Vicphysics Facebook page and Twitter account

VicPhysics has created a Facebook and Twitter account. We hope you will like our page and follow us @Vicphysics. We will comment and tweet when each Newsletter is published as well as publish great links and pages we find that support Physics education in Victoria.

The links are:

Facebook: 

Twitter:

Newsletter wordpress:  

2. Due Dates for Student Competitions

a) Physics Video and Photo Contests entries are due now.

Several entries have already been received. The official closing date for both events is this week. Please get any last entries in by this Friday, 7th October.

b) Young Physicists Tournament Team lists are due by Friday, 11th November

Check for further details.

c) Physics Investigation Poster Competition entries are due by Friday 11th November

Check for further details.

c) Acoustics Investigation Competition entries are due by Friday, 28th October

Entries are to be sent to aasacousticsprize@ . Check for further details

3. Physics Video Gallery - A find from

is a UK website for physics teachers to share ideas and resources and to also seek assistance form colleagues. A recent popular item was about a 'gallery of animated images', which turned out to be an initiative of a physics teacher from Queensland, Derek MacKenzie. Derek's gallery is located at .

Derek posted the following comments about using videos in the classroom.

"Some of the problems/limitations with videos when you’re in a classroom setting:

• You don’t always have access to social video-sharing platforms like YouTube and Facebook

• Videos get taken down by YouTube all the time, especially for violating copyright. (Sorry kids, it was there when I prepared this lesson last night!)

• The performance of video is unreliable, often requiring better bandwidth than the teaching facility offers

• Unless you’re playing the whole video, you have to muck around finding the exact location where a cool effect happens

A well-timed short animated GIF can solve these issues in many instances and can be great for:

• Grabbing attention at the start of a lesson

• Motivating an upcoming concept

• Re-igniting a failing lesson

• Stimulating a class discussion

• Filling in an unanticipated gap in a useful way

• Focusing on the precise phenomena without clunky overhead and time wastage

So I’ve set up a Physics GIF Gallery which I’m very happy to freely share with the physics teaching community. In particular, I can help make sure:

• Only the best GIFs will be presented, saving you time searching through pages and pages of rubbish on social sharing sites

• There are no broken image links (because I’m personally hosting all the images)\Original sources are properly attributed (shielding you from infringement issues)

• Annotations exist to give you ideas for how you might use an animation in a lesson."

Some videos include: an astronaut ‘weighing’ himself in space, a shockwave generated by a real volcano eruption, a laser pulse filmed at a trillion frames per second. There are over 30 videos.

You need to register and set up a username and password, but when you register you get an email with links to i) explanatory articles, ii) amusing videos, iii) 'best free trustworthy text books and courses, etc.

There are also regular emails about additions to the gallery.

Another topic on 'talkphysics' that generated a lot of correspondence was 'What is potential difference?'

Any teacher can join 'talkphysics'. There is no cost, you just need to generate a username and password. You will also be notified by email of new topics as the are posted.

4. 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics - The Secrets of Exotic Matter

This year's Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to three British scientists working in the US: David J. Thouless at the University of Washington in Seattle, F. Duncan M. Haldane at Princeton University, J. Michael Kosterlitz at Brown University on Rhode Island.

This year’s Laureates opened the door on an unknown world where matter can assume strange states. They have used advanced mathematical methods to study unusual phases of matter, such as superconductors, superfluids or thin magnetic films. Thanks to their pioneering work, the hunt is now on for new and exotic phases of matter. Many people are hopeful of future applications in both materials science and electronics.

The popular science explanation of this Nobel Prize from the Nobel website:



They used the mathematical tool of topology to explain physical properties that change in a stepwise manner.

This PhysicsWorld link, , has short bios of the two Scottish and one English Scientists as well as links to explanatory videos on 'topological insulators' and their potential applications.

5. Forthcoming events for Students and General Public

a) International Master Class in Particle Physics, 8:45 - 4:45pm, 25th October, South Oakleigh College

The annual International Master Class in Particle Physics run by CoEPP (Centre of Excellence in Particle Physics) will take place this year at South Oakleigh College. The CoEPP is based at the University of Melbourne.

There will be talks on the Standard Model of Particle Physics, the Large Hadron Collider and the ATLAS Particle Detector, as well as workshops analysing collision data from the LHC using the HYPATIA software tool. Students will become research scientists for the day, searching the data for signs of the Higgs Boson as well as other fundamental particles such as the Z boson.

At 4pm there will be a video link for 30 - 45 minutes with Australian members of the ATLAS project team in CERN Geneva Switzerland, who will be pleased to get up early in their morning to discuss their work with the students.

Venue: South Oakleigh College, Bakers Road, Oakleigh South

Date & Time: Tuesday October 25th from 8:45 am to 4:45pm.

There will be around 20 places available for students to participate..

Students should attend with their Physics teacher and bring their own lunch and drinks. There is no charge involved.

Contact: Frank de la Rambelya - Head of Science - South Oakleigh College, email:delarambelya.frank.d@edumail..au

6. Forthcoming events for Teachers

a) Dark matter: A Southern Hemisphere Perspective, 7pm, Thursday, 13th October, Royal Society of Victoria

Speaker: Elisabetta Barberio, Professor of High Energy Physics at the University of Melbourne

Venue: The Royal Society of Victoria, 8 La Trobe St, Melbourne, VIC

Elisabetta will discuss the direct search for dark matter within the Southern Hemisphere with the SABRE experiment, which will either confirm or deny current results from Northern Hemisphere experiments and may well lead to a breakthrough discovery. She will also discuss the physics program of the first underground physics laboratory of the Southern Hemisphere, SUPL (Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory), right here in Victoria, Australia, which will house the SABRE program.

Abstract Since the Dark Matter question was initially raised by Fritz Zwicky in the 1930s, evidence for a particle or a set of particles explaining the nature of dark matter remains absent. Determining the precise nature of Dark Matter is one of the main open questions of contemporary physics.

The resolution of this open question will probably entail a major Copernican revolution; "normal," baryonic matter, which constitutes our known environment, represents only about 4% of the total energy content in the Universe. In the last decade, there has been impressive experimental progress to detect dark matter interactions with normal matter, with the development of new generation technologies used in direct detection experiments. The sensitivity of these experiments has improved tremendously, producing devices uniquely suited to solving the dark matter puzzle.

About the Speaker: Professor Barberio has been a member of the Experimental Particle Physics Group at the University of Melbourne since 2004. Previously, she was a staff researcher at CERN, the European laboratory of Particle Physics.

She was involved with data analysis in the OPAL experiment at Large Electron Positron Collider at CERN. Precision measurements made at this collider have confirmed the theory describing the fundamental particle behaviour to an extraordinary degree of precision.

Professor Barberio is a Chief Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Particle Physics at the Terascale and leads the SUPL project, part of an international collaboration with leading physicists based in a sister underground laboratory at Gran Sasso, Italy.

Email: rsv@.au , Contact Phone (03) 9663 5259

To book:

The lecture is free, but you need to book.

b) Advancing Science & Engineering through Laboratory Learning, 9am - 3pm, 21st October, Geelong

This workshop is free, however, participants are requested to commit to sharing their learning from the workshop with colleagues within their school. The program includes hands-on sessions exploring exemplary practical activities targeted at the 7 – 10 science curriculum, as well as sessions investigating ideas for optimising science learning in the laboratory.

Venue: St Ignatius College, 27 Peninsula Dr, Drysdale VIC 3222

Date and Time: 9:00 am– 3:00 pm, Friday, 21 October, 2016

The program includes hands-on sessions exploring exemplary practical activities targeted at the 7 – 10 science curriculum, as well as sessions investigating ideas for optimising science learning in the laboratory.

Sessions will include student participants and you may invite a student from your school to attend.

Morning tea and lunch provided together with comprehensive notes.

To register please complete the registration form at:



c) Advancing Science & Engineering through Laboratory Learning, 9am - 3pm, 28th October, Mooroolbark

This workshop is free, however, participants are requested to commit to sharing their learning from the workshop with colleagues within their school. The program includes hands-on sessions exploring exemplary practical activities targeted at the 7 – 10 science curriculum, as well as sessions investigating ideas for optimising science learning in the laboratory

Venue: Mooroolbark College, 186 Manchester Road, Mooroolbark, VIC 3138

Date and Time: 9:00 am– 3:00 pm, Friday 28 October 2016 at Mooroolbark Secondary College

The program includes hands-on sessions exploring exemplary practical activities targeted at the 7 – 10 science curriculum, as well as sessions investigating ideas for optimising science learning in the laboratory.

Sessions will include student participants and you may invite a student from your school to attend.

Morning tea and lunch provided together with comprehensive notes.

To register please complete the registration form at:



d) Free ANSTO Teacher Professional Development Day, 10th November, Australian Synchrotron

Get some new ideas for teaching nuclear science in Year 9 and VCE Physics. Hear from prominent Australian scientists, participate in workshops, tour the Australian Synchrotron and receive new education resources.

When: Thursday November 10, 2016, 9am-3pm

Where: Australian Synchrotron, 800 Blackburn Rd, Clayton, Victoria

Cost: Free

Registrations and more information:

e) Unit 3 Course Planning Days - 29th, 30th November, University High School

Units 3 and 4 of the new study design are to be implemented next year. The next Physics Teachers' Conference will be held in February after the school year has already started. So the Vicphysics Teachers' Network has decided to run two Course Planning Days in late November this year focussing on the changes in Unit 3, that is, mainly the Fields Area of Study.

The programs for each day will be the same and will include:

• Prof Dick Gunstone from Monash University speaking on 'Fields, Force, Energy and Potential: Students' misconceptions and the use of analogies'

• Prof Richard Morrow from University of Sydney speaking on 'The Physics of Lightning: A context for Electric Fields'

• Small Group Discussions on sample Assessment Tasks for Unit 3. A set of tasks will be prepared and used as a basis for discussion and refinement.

• Examples of Practical Activities related to the new content.

Dates: Tuesday, 29th November and repeated on Wednesday, 30th November *

Venue: Elizabeth Blackburn School of Sciences, University High School *

Cost: $80 to teachers, $25 to student teachers **

Lunch is provided.

To Register: Go to . Note: Trybooking requires payment by credit card.

Public Transport: University High School is well served by public transport, so teachers in the metropolitan area are encouraged to use it.

Parking: There is some parking in the streets around University High School, but spots are quickly taken and are mostly only for two hours. There is a commercial car park adjacent to the school at the Royal Melbourne Hospital car park.

Country participants: A subsidy for using a commercial car park as well as petrol costs will be available to teachers coming from outside the metropolitan area.

* At that time of the year, University High School is largely student free for a few days each year. Last year Vicphysics ran its Victorian Young Physicists' Tournament (VYPT) for Year 10 and Year 11 students over two days and has booked the same two days for this year's event.

The Unit 3 Course Planning Day program will run along side the VYPT program. Teachers coming to the Course Planning Day will have a chance to see VYPT in action and teachers bringing teams to VYPT on one of the two days will be able to attend the Course Planning Day on the other day.

** The fee for student teachers is basically for the catering component. It is hoped, that the student teachers attending a Course Planning Day will also contribute to the judging of the VYPT contests on the other day. Information about the event is at and information about judging will be supplied early in Term 4.

For more details about the Course Planning Days go to .

7. Physics News from the Web

Items selected from the bulletins of the Institute of Physics (UK) and the American Institute of Physics.

Each item below includes the introductory paragraphs and a web link to the rest of the article.

a) In praise of Descartes

b) When a water slide goes wrong

c) Women of NASA - LEGO kit?

d) The Physics of Sport Roundup

a) In praise of Descartes



Nobel Prize winner, Steven Weinberg criticised Descartes scientific contribution. In this PhysicsWorld article, Robert Crease comes to Descartes defence.

In the Wallace Collection in London is a sculpture entitled "Descartes Piercing the Darkness of Ignorance". Completed by Robert Guillaume Dardel in 1782, the sculpture shows the French philosopher, mathematician and scientist struggling to free himself from thick, enveloping clouds, inspired by rays of the Sun emerging from a hole in their midst. It casts René Descartes (1596–1650), who played a foundational role in both describing and using the scientific method, as a triumphant liberator. "No other great philosopher," observes the venerable Dictionary of Scientific Biography, "except perhaps Aristotle, can have spent so much time in experimental observation."

Recently, however, Descartes’ image has come under attack. Despite being a pop-culture celebrity for his philosophical remark "I think, therefore I am," Descartes is routinely scorned for scientific and philosophical missteps. In his 2015 book To Explain the World, for instance, the Nobel-prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg writes: "For someone who claimed to have found the true method for seeking reliable knowledge, it is remarkable how wrong Descartes was about so many aspects of nature…his repeated failure to get things right must cast a shadow on his philosophical judgement."

b) When a water slide goes wrong



A short article about a badly designed amusement park ride. The article features a video showing the ride under test conditions in which the raft becomes airborne on the first hill. The discussion under comments is detailed and useful.

c) Women of NASA - LEGO kit?



This proposed set celebrates five notable NASA pioneers and provides an educational building experience to help young ones and adults alike learn about the history of women in STEM.

The proposal has reached 10,000 supporters and Lego has said to the initiators of the project:

"You have ROCKETED your way to the 10,000 supporter milestone, seemingly supported by the entire internet, and you've done so by educating us about these particular women's achievements in the U.S. space program and STEM in general, but beyond that showing us all that there are always plenty of very hard working and talented individuals who go unrecognised for their accomplishments. Your individual vignettes clearly contain plenty of educational value, but bring forward a splash of humour as well, in order to make this a well-rounded set. 

Following your hard work in campaigning for this project, ... we now officially advance this project to the Review phase.

What happens now?

This project moves from the Idea stage to the Review stage. A "LEGO Review Board" composed of designers, product managers, and other key team members will examine the idea. We'll build concept models and determine if the concept meets our high standards for what it takes to be a LEGO product. This includes factors such as playability, safety, and fit with the LEGO brand. Every potential LEGO product goes through a process like this and must meet the same standards."

Check the website for the latest.

d) The Physics of Sport Roundup



Every sport has physics at its core, whether its football, cricket, golf or the shotput. What can we learn from physics that might help us understand our favourite games? This Journal of Physics article is very comprehensive with numerous links to more detailed background articles.

Also check this PhysicsWorld link for three PhysicsWorld videos on the Physics of Sport

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