Recently in Free Science Videos Category

It’s the Easter holidays and I’m hoping my A-level students are using at least some of the time to revise. I’ve been sending them regular emails reminding them to study and including useful web links when I find them. I’ve recently come across a whole series of A-level Physics Revision Videos on YouTube as well as a single 15 minute video that claims to cover all the electricity in the AS syllabus for the AQA course.

I’m impressed by the guys who made these videos - the videos are clear summaries of the content and must have taken a lot of time and effort to make. However, I’m not convinced that just watching such videos is terribly useful as a form of revision. My advice to my students has been to watch the videos in short chunks and make notes - to write down the information as well as simply watching and listening. I can’t help but feel a better form of revision would be for students to try and make their own such videos - something they could easily do alone or working in pairs, using the video functions that most of them will have on their mobile phones.

I’m keen to hear thoughts from other teachers on this and on any other ways of revising that might be effective.

UPDATE: Thank you to Carol Davenport who has provided this link in the comments to an activity sheet for students to complete while watching a video.

UPDATE 2: Peter Upton has provided a worksheet to complete while watching the above video. Download word document: elecvideosummary.docx.

A few years ago, I helped make a bunch of films intended for use in GCSE Science lessons. I was reminded of their existence when a friend of mine stumbled across them on the internet. Below is one about Nuclear Fission which I particularly like (although I’d probably have made it, and the others, differently if I had had editorial control). You can see the whole collection here.

Thanks to the generosity and support of The National STEM Centre and the Institute of Physics, Jonathan Sanderson and I, working with the legendary textbook writer David Sang, have recently completed a batch of videos aimed at sharing classic Physics demonstrations with teachers around the world. You can watch and download the films from here.

We hope to be making more of these films later this year, so watch this space for updates.

I’ve recently been marking GCSE “case studies” - coursework where students get to “research a science related question” e.g., Should we use more nuclear power? Are humans responsible for global warming?

A friend of mine told me about a really good case study by a student of hers entitled “Does the MMR vaccine cause autism?” It started with the statement “I am interested in this topic because my father decided against having me vaccinated when I was a child.”

After looking at a variety of sources of information, the student concluded that there was not really any scientific evidence to link the MMR vaccine to autism. However, she also stated that the side effects of vaccines were a good reason to avoid vaccinating your children. I found this depressing - vaccines and vaccination are one of science’s greatest achievements and I was saddened that this bright, capable student had failed to acknowledge this.

I wish she’d watched this film:

Here’s Dr Michael de Podesta of the National Physical Laboratory on the science of mobile phones. A video of a lecture, which is unsuitable for showing in class in its entirety, but invaluable for non-specialists teaching Physics at KS4 and for us specialists who could do with refreshing our own knowledge. You could also borrow some of his ideas for presenting in your own lessons. This video would also be an excellent resource for students looking at mobile phone safety for their GCSE Science case study.

Are mobile phones safe? Dr. Michael de Podesta From: Mobile phone safety 2010-01-28 12:00:00.0 Communications Channel >> go to webcast>> recommend to friend

This is a fantastic clip from an American version of “Dragon’s Den” which I think would make an excellent starting point for a discussion on “how science works”. It’s so good it could have been made for this very purpose:

Some obvious questions to get the discussion going:

Are the Dragons right or are they just being rude by refusing to allow the guy to show them more of his “research”? (He claims to have lots more he can show them)

What, if anything, is wrong with the salesman’s research?

The salesman claims he has video testimony of people who have been cured by his medicine - would that be enough to convince you of its efficacy? If not, why not?

Why do you think the “Dragons” reacted so violently against this man?

“How Science Works” is now a major part of the national curriculum in England and Wales. Its introduction was controversial and its implementation has, as I wrote recently, gone awry. Despite my concerns about the problems of teaching and assessing HSW as suggested by certain GCSE course, I believe it is a crucial part of the science curriculum and deserves to be taught well. I think this film might help you do just that:

Sorry for the awful title to this post - but I have been inspired by “John Travoltage”, the most fun Physics interactive I have ever encountered. I should warn you - you may lose hours of your life to this joyful game.

On a more serious note, this website has a whole bunch of “Fun, interactive, research-based simulations of physical phenomena from the PhET project at the University of Colorado”. And the best thing? They’re all FREE.

Watching sodium being put into water is one of the few things that everyone seems to remember from school science lessons. I would encourage all science teachers do do as much as they can “for real” when it comes to teaching the “reactivity of metals”. If for some reason, there are some experiments you can’t do in school, there are some videos from the Royal Society of Chemistry that you might find useful. There are also a wealth of such videos on youtube, if you are prepared to spend the time looking for them (although, as in the example below, the voiceovers are likely to be so amusing to your students that you might be better off switching off the sound and explaining the science yourself)

This link came through on one of the physics teaching mailing lists I’m subscribed to (thank you, Helen Reynolds - your description of it is perfect). It’s a chromoscope that provides “a nice way to display images at different wavelengths by allowing you to fade between them”. Take a look and I’m sure you’ll find a way to incorporate it into a lesson on the EM spectrum or even when teaching “Space” to Year 7.