Minister checks on science exams December 5, 2008

On the BBC news pages today:

“A government minister has said he is calling in copies of GCSE and A-level science exam papers to satisfy himself they are not being “dumbed down”.

Science Minister Lord Drayson said it was vital that the brightest and best pupils were stretched by education.
“As a science minister I’m determined to make sure that happens.” He added: “No dumbing down on my watch.”

Too late, minister.

Ten years ago I was using O’ level texts to support first year A’ level Physics. Now I’m back at the whiteboard again and finding both AS and A2 students have huge gaps in their knowledge and experience from GCSE; whole topics that I would have included for all GCSE Physics groups! As a result I’m about to use a GCSE text book to support my A2 group as most of them have virtually no prior knowledge of electromagnetism.

Shame on the schools and teachers who gave them such an inadequate education in Physics. Shame on the  government and examination boards for dumbing down the A’ level syllabus as a pragmatic solution to the problem of a shortage of graduate school Physics teachers.

Read the full story: here

The large hadron collider September 8, 2008

I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I’ve been very interested – even a bit excited – in the development of this experimental machine which hopes to find (or not) the Higgs boson and hence prove (or not) how gravity fits into the modified “theory of everything” that Einstein spent so much effort on.

As a physicist, I can actually understand a lot of the physics involved. My wife and I have watched several TV documentaries on it and were looking forward to some exciting news later this week when it springs into action.

Until I Googled and found this article.

Our excitement waned on reading:

“Come 10 September, the first protons will be whipped up to nearly the speed of light through a chain of smaller accelerators on the CERN site. Then they will be injected into one of the LHC’s two adjacent beam-pipes at an energy of 0.45 trillion electron volts (TeV).”

“…the operations team will adjust the magnets and try again with a fresh beam until they have systematically threaded the protons around the entire machine. That could take from a few hours to a few days with a crew working around the clock. Then, the team will have to do the same for the beam in the other direction.”

“The next challenge will be to get the beams in a stable orbit for several hours at a time. Only then can CERN contemplate ramping up the energy to 5 TeV and finally bringing the counter-rotating beams head on at a collision energy of 10 TeV.
If luck is on their side, that should take place around the time of the official LHC inauguration on 21 October. In early 2009, the protons are set to collide at the full energy of 14 TeV.”

“it will likely take a year for researchers on the LHC’s four experiments to understand their cathedral-scale detectors well enough to make a discovery.”

and finally:

“Finding the Higgs boson, which would solve the mystery of where mass comes from, could take two to three years.”

So don’t hold your breath, folks.

Beautiful Astronomical photos January 4, 2008

Helix nebula. Dust from comets that survived the death of their star is clouding the “eye” of the distant Helix nebula, as revealed by an image released by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope on Feb. 12. (Photo: news.cn)

This is one of several wonderful photos released recently by National Geographic and featured: here