Physics News from the AIP No 2, Term 1 2005



VicPhysics News: Term 4, No 8 2016

Dear ,

Table of Contents

1. Events in 2017

2. Update on Resources from the Unit 3 Course Planning Days

3. Unit 2 Survey by Vicphysics closes at the end of Term

4. Bottle Flip Physics

5. Physics Mentor Scheme for 2017

6. Forthcoming events for Students and the General Public

a) LIGO, Gravitational Waves and the New Astronomy, 6:30pm, Friday, 16th December, Swinburne University

b) Physics Days at Luna Park: Bookings are open

7. Forthcoming events for Teachers

a) Physics Teachers' Conference, Thursday, 16th February, La Trobe University

8. Physics News from the Web

a) The Radium Girls: They paid with their lives. Their final fight was for justice.

b) Unknown unknowns

c) Is the universe a sponge?

d) Fermi: physicist with a capital F

The next meeting of the Vicphysics Teachers' Network will be at 5pm on Tuesday, 7th February at Melbourne Girls' College. 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. Events in 2017

Please enter the following dates in your 2017 diary.

• 14th February Physics Teachers' Conference, La Trobe University

• 7th - 10th March Physics Days at Luna Park

• 3rd April Practical Activities Workshops and Equipment Fair, Camberwell Grammar School

• 4th April Beginning Physics Teachers' In-Service

• August Girls in Physics Breakfasts (dates and venues TBC)

• 13th October Closing Date for entries to:

• Victorian Young Physicists' Tournament

• Physics Photo Contest

• Physics Video Contest

• Practical Investigation Poster Competition

• Australian Acoustics Society Prize for experimental research in acoustics

• 24th October Victorian Young Physicists' Tournament (Date and venue TBC)

The Vicphysics Newsletters next year will have details of these events and how to book.

2. Resources from the Unit 3 Course Planning Days An Update

The last newsletter described the material from the Course Planning Days that is now on our website. One of the sessions on the day considered sample assessment tasks for Unit 3. The feedback from the groups has been used to update the following tasks. The other tasks will be updated over the holidays.

• a report of a physics phenomenon for the Field AoS

• data analysis for the Motion AoS

• an explanation of the operation of a device for each of the Fields AoS and the Electrical energy AoS

3. Unit 2 Survey by Vicphysics closes at the end of Term

The Unit 2 Survey closes shortly, please take a few minutes before the school year finishes to complete the survey.

A strong response will provide to

• find out about teachers' experiences of the Unit 2 Options and the Practical Investigation Area of Study,

• share what worked well and

• identify areas where support is needed. 

The survey is on Survey Monkey and should take 15 minutes to complete. It can be accessed at

Progressive analysis can be seen at

The last newsletter included a summary of the responses on the Options

4. Bottle Flip Physics

There is a post at , the UK physics teachers forum for teachers to share ideas, on bottle flipping in which the teacher has provided some teaching ideas and slides.



Other useful resources are:

• The Science of Bottle Flipping . By an enthusiastic student who mixes up some physics concepts, but the basic explanation is OK

• The complex physics of that viral water bottle trick, explained

• Mercury Bottle Flip by the backyard scientist,

5. Physics Mentor Scheme for 2017

The Physics Mentor Scheme will operate again next year. It is designed for beginning physics teachers and also for teachers teaching at Year 12 for the first time. There will be a Beginning Physics Teachers In-Service on 4th April, but if you would like a mentor from the beginning of the year please contact Vicphysics at vicphys@. The mentors can visit the school once a term to talk over matters and will be available for phone and email conversations.

6. Forthcoming events for Students and General Public

a) LIGO, Gravitational Waves and the New Astronomy, 6:30pm, Friday, 16th December, Swinburne University

Presenter: Dr Eric Thrane, Monash University

Abstract: On September 14, 2015, gravitational waves from the merger of two black holes rippled through the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO). The measurement of these ripples would ultimately lead to the first direct detection of gravitational waves, the first observation of a binary black hole, and the birth of an entirely new field of astronomy. In this talk, I trace the history of gravitational waves from Einstein to the LIGO detection. I'll describe how LIGO works and how we are using it to learn about black holes and other interesting objects. I'll discuss the future of gravitational-wave astronomy in Australia and around the world.

Venue: ATC101, Hawthorn campus, Swinburne university

Map:



b) Physics Days at Luna Park: Bookings Open

Next year the Physics Days at Luna Park will be on Tuesday, 7th March through to Friday 10th March.

The days will run from 10:00am to 2:00pm, unless an aerobatic display by a member of the RAAF Roulette team is confirmed, in which case the the display will be at 10:00am and the Physics Day will run from 10:30am until 2:30pm.

You can book on line at or contact Luna Park by phone on 9525 5033 or by fax on 9534 5764.

The cost will be $25.50 per student with teachers free.

You can book a tentative date now with approximate numbers and update details in January, once your timetable and class size is known.

If you wish to book a data logger for a half day, please contact Vicphysics at vicphys@ with subject: Datalogger booking and indicating on which day you will be coming and whether you want Vernier or Pasco.

5. Forthcoming events for Teachers

a) Physics Teachers' Conference, Thursday, 16th February, La Trobe University

The program includes:

• Day and late afternoon sessions. Participants can attend the day and/or the late afternoon sessions,

• Address on 'The why and how of Practical Investigations' by Brian McKittrick, respected physics teacher and author

• Address on 'Uncertain principles: Is the Heisenberg principle really about uncertainty?' by Dr Russell Anderson, Monash University

• Report by Andrew Hansen, the Chief Assessor, on the 2016 November Exam,

• VCAA Update and Unit 4 Poster presentation and Assessment by Maria James, Science Curriculum Manager, VCAA

• Over 50 workshops across four sessions, some on VCE topics, some on general topics across Years 7 - 12 and others specifically for Years 7 - 10

Copies of the Program and the Registration form are available on the STAV website,

Online registration is not yet available.

6. 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) The Radium Girls: They paid with their lives. Their final fight was for justice.

b) Unknown unknowns

c) Is the universe a sponge?

d) Fermi: physicist with a capital F

a) The Radium Girls: They paid with their lives. Their final fight was for justice.



Radium-dial painters, mostly young working-class women, haunt the history of health physics. These young women with untreatable symptoms – whom the contemporary press and they themselves described as “the walking dead” – walk or more often hobble through Kate Moore’s book The Radium Girls. Their cases inspired the development of the field of radiation safety. The infamous photos of gross tumours overtaking the faces of pretty young women triggered a serious re-examination of the dangers of man-made radioactive isotopes in the 1920s, a time when merchants promoted radium as a miracle cure for whatever ails you. The case also led to the development of the first methods to detect radioactivity in living bodies. Indeed, the radium dial workers’ bodies became the raw material around which early health physicists created the notion of “permissible dose”.

b) Unknown unknowns



People who raise “unknown unknowns” to promote a particular course of action – such as closing particle colliders – are doing a disservice to science, says Robert P Crease

Last May the Huffington Post ran a piece entitled “Why physics experiments at the subatomic level may cause ‘unknown unknowns’ to destroy the world”. It was written by Peter Reynosa, a poet and painter from San Francisco, who’s also the author of a dystopian novel about the dangers of rationalism. As an enthusiastic newcomer to the old debate over whether the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will destroy the universe, Reynosa reckoned the LHC is a monster that is “nightmaring itself into our world”. Though vague on specifics, Reynosa claimed the collider is staging “very dangerous experiments that may cause the world’s destruction”.

To support his claim, Reynosa cited the Bush Administration defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s famous phrase concerning “unknown unknowns”, which he originally used in 2002 to defend the invasion of Iraq. The LHC is designed to investigate matter at its fundamental levels. Although we may not think this poses any dangers, there could be, Reynosa claimed, things we don’t know that may cause its operation to trigger “catastrophic repercussions” that will create an “unthinkable horror”.

c) Is the universe a sponge?



Does the large-scale universe look more like meatballs, like Swiss cheese or like a sponge? A meatball universe would be composed of isolated, disconnected regions of high density embedded in a connected low-density background. The Swiss cheese universe would be precisely the opposite: low-density isolated voids embedded in a high-density connected background. A sponge is neither of the above or, if you prefer, a compromise between the two. In a sponge both the low-density and high-density regions are each connected, and ideally both the sponge and its “complement” (the network of holes) are identical in character, at least from a topological point of view.

d) Fermi: physicist with a capital F



Enrico Fermi – one of the great physicists of the 20th century – was a beacon for every Italian student of physics including myself. This sentiment is wonderfully captured in The Pope of Physics by Gino Segrè and Bettina Hoerlin, as they explain how Fermi’s colleagues bequeathed him with the title of “Pope”, thanks to his ability of using “the simplest of means [to] estimate the magnitude of any physical phenomena”. With their book, Segrè and Hoerlin present the first, long-awaited, English-language biography of one of the most creative and hard-working scientists of recent times.[pic][pic][pic][pic][pic][pic]

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