Physics News from the AIP Term 2, No 1, 2013
Table of Contents
1. Student numbers in Physics - How do you compare?
2. Resources from Past Newsletters
3. Physics Teachers' Conference Proceedings - Extra material
4. Victorian Young Physicists' Tournament: Dates for Year 10 and Year 11
5. Forthcoming events for Students and the General Public *
a) Chasing Dead Stars, 6:30pm, Friday, 19th April, Swinburne University
b) The "Gran Telescopio de Canarias" (GTC): First Light of the Largest Optical Telescope on Earth, 6:30pm, 3rd May, Swinburne University
c) Lectures for Physics Students: Applications of photonics, 6pm, 9th May, University of Melbourne
6. Physics News from the Web
a) Holographic imaging technique looks through flames
b) Planck (space mission) reveals 'almost perfect' universe
c) A pioneering approach to cancer treatment - Proton therapy - Three short videos
* Events listed for the first time are in bold with details below. The details of the other events can be found on our website at www.vicphysics.org/forthcomingevents.html or in previous newsletters at www.vicphysics.org/aipnews.html
This newsletter is compiled by the Australian Institute of Physics (Victorian Branch) Education Committee.
This year the AIP Education Committee will be meeting at Kew High School, normally on the second Tuesday of the month from 5pm – 7pm, the next meeting is on Tuesday, 14th May. All teachers are welcome to attend this or any other meeting. You don't need to be a member of the AIP to get involved. If you would like to attend, please contact the chair, Sue Grant, at .
1. Student numbers in Physics - How do you compare?
The actual number of students doing Year 12 Physics has been increasing for the last five years, although very slowly. The proportion of the school population that stays on to Year 12 has also been increasing in a small way. However this is not the full explanation for the increase in physics numbers as the proportion of the full age cohort who choose Year 12 physics has also been increasing. That is, if you take all the students in Year 10 and look at where they are two years later, either at school or in work, and what subjects they are doing, if at school, more of them are now doing Year 12 physics than at any time in the last seven years. This suggests a slight increase in the intrinsic attraction of doing physics.
If one also looks at student numbers in Year 11, the picture become more complicated.
The proportion of Year 10 students, both male and female, choosing Unit 1 Physics has been falling steadily for the last 17 years. In 1996 the figures were male: 29.5%, female: 11.5%. By 2011 the values had fallen to 22.4%, 6.2% resp. No doubt due to the absence of secondary physics as a specific tertiary pre-requisite from any course. Fortunately the values for 2012 show a slight reversal of the trend.
What proportion of your Year 10 students do Physics in Year 11? If your figures are better than this, the AIP Committee is keen to hear what you are doing?
Looking at the transition from Year 11 Physics to Year 12 Physics, the picture is the reverse. The proportion of Year 11 physics students continuing on to Year 12 physics, both male and female, has been increasing quite markedly since 2008, for boys: from 72% in 2008 to 77.5% in 2012, for girls: from 65% to 74%.
The AIP Committee thinks the introduction of Detailed Studies is a factor in this, providing a more accessible and meaningful physics experience.
Once again if your figures are better than this, the AIP Committee would like to know what you are doing?
So, the slight increase in Year 12 numbers is due to two opposing trends.
More details can be found at www.vicphysics.org/edresearch.html
2. Resources from Past Newsletters
This email newsletter is in its 12th year and it is now distributed to over 1000 teachers. While some of the items in past editions were about events which have now passed, many were about resources that are still active, events that are on-going and ideas that are still useful.
Relevant items have been progressively compiled. The document is now 72 pages long (780 kB) and contains over 180 items. The titles are separately available in a smaller file. Both files can be downloaded at http://www.vicphysics.org/aipnews.html
Another feature of the newsletter is 'Physics News from the Web'. One intention of this feature is to let teachers know of developments and innovations in physics and related technologies, some of which could be briefly referred to when talking to students. Another possible use is for a Physics News section on a wall in the classroom. Recent news items or ones that relate to the current content could be posted for students to see as they enter or leave the classroom.
To assist with this, the titles of the 680 news items have been put in an Excel file and categorised by Area of Study for easy searching. There is a web link to the original item in the AIP newsletter, which contains the short description and the web link to the original full story. The original stories usually contain a graphic so are useful for display.
The Excel file can also be downloaded at http://www.vicphysics.org/aipnews.html
3. Physics Teachers' Conference Proceedings - Extra material
The powerpoint from workshop A8 'What’s been happening at the Large Hadron Collider? ICHEP 2012 and the Higgs Boson' by Shane McLean, St Margaret's School has been uploaded. It is a 33 MB file containing some videos.
There are now 23 files from 17 workshops available at http://www.vicphysics.org/conf2013.html
The powerpoint on Radioactivity by Dr David Hoxley from La Trobe University has had over 600 downloads since he first did his presentation at last year's conference. In fact there have been over 5,800 downloads of all the files from the 2012 Conference, indicating our website's reach goes beyond Victoria!
Popular downloads so far from this conference include: the Chief Assessor's Report, SACs and Pracs with Paul Fitz-Gerald and Paul Fielding, Video analysis by Kelvin Barraclough, Chris Fox's Peter Mac talk, Online interactions by Michael Rosenbrock and Steve Draper, and Introductory Light Activities by Helen Lye and Dan O'Keeffe.
4. Victorian Young Physicists' Tournament: Dates for Year 10 and Year 11
Last year's Victorian Young Physicists' Tournament (VYPT) had a few Year 10 teams competing. The interest for this year's event is likely to exceed the capacity of the venue to hold the full event on one day. So the AIP Education Committee has decided to hold the event for Year 10 teams on Wednesday, 4th December and the event for Year 11 and mixed teams on Thursday, 5th December. Both events will be held at Quantum Victoria in Macleod West, near La Trobe University.
If you would like your students to be involved, the students in teams of three experimentally investigate three topics between now and December and then present and defend their reports to other teams and also challenge the reports of other teams.
The topics for 2013 are:
1. Incandescent Lamp: It is said that one 10 W light bulb shine brighter than two 5 W bulbs. Is it true? Investigate how a small change in supplied voltage will affect light emission and a light bulb’s lifetime.
2. Flotation: A piece of a flattened raisin, which is dropped into a glass of soda water, periodically sinks and goes back to the surface. Investigate the dependence of the period of these oscillations on various parameters.
3. Bright Waves: Illuminate a water tank. When there are waves on the water surface, you can see bright and dark patterns on the bottom of the tank. Study the relation between the waves and the pattern.
Check http://www.vicphysics.org/vypt2013.html for more details. There is no cost to enter.
5. Forthcoming events for Students and General Public *
a) Chasing Dead Stars, 6:30pm, Friday, 19th April, Swinburne University
Time: 6.30 - 7.30 Venue: Swinburne University, Hawthorn Campus, ATC Building, ATC101
Presenter: Anna Sippel PhD student, Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University and ESO Santiago
Booking required: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dFh5U0xjQUZqa09RaVRhb2ZsOEk3dEE6MA
Abstract: Stars don't shine forever - and especially very massive stars don't live very long before ending their lives as neutron stars or black holes. In this lecture we will focus on the endpoints of the evolution of such massive stars and how a black hole can be formed during a stellar explosion called supernova. We will discuss how black holes of different sizes can be detected under certain circumstances, and implications for theories that stellar-mass black holes could be the seeds of supermassive black holes we find at the centres of galaxies like our Milky Way.
b) The "Gran Telescopio de Canarias" (GTC): First Light of the Largest Optical Telescope on Earth, 6:30pm, 3rd May, Swinburne University
Presenter: Professor Rafael Guzman, University of Florida
Date: Friday 3 May, Time: 6.30pm - 7.30 pm
Venue: Swinburne University, Hawthorn Campus, ATC Building, ATC101
Abstract:
The GTC is the last - and the largest - of the new generation of giant ground-based observatories that have opened up a new era of discoveries in astronomy at the dawn of the XXIst Century. The GTC has been built by a consortium of institutions from Spain, Mexico and the University of Florida. In this talk, I will review the general characteristics of this state-of-the-art telescope. I will also describe the main contributions of the University of Florida to its world-class instrumentation, and will present the first scientific results ranging from the birth of the universe to the detection of new planets to be obtained after its first light.
Booking required: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dEdRbHJyNE5JczlJY3pOTXJSdDJVZ3c6MQ
c) Lectures for Physics Students: Applications of photonics, 6pm, 9th May, University of Melbourne
This series of lectures is specifically designed to cover the Years 11 and 12 VCE Study Design. The lectures, of about 1 hour duration, are held on Thursdays at 6pm in the Laby Theatre of the School of Physics. Some light refreshments are available before the lectures.
The speaker is Dr Wayne Rowland of Swinburne University. The talk will be relevant to Unit 2 Light and Unit 4 Photonics.
Details about the lecture series can be found at http://outreach.physics.unimelb.edu.au/VCE/Lecture-Series
6. Physics News from the Web
Items selected from the bulletins of the Institute of Physics (UK) and the American Institute of Physics.
a) Holographic imaging technique looks through flames
b) Planck (space mission) reveals 'almost perfect' universe
c) A pioneering approach to cancer treatment - Proton therapy - Three short videos
a) Holographic imaging technique looks through flames
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2013/mar/12/holographic-imaging-technique-looks-through-flames
A new method of digital holography with the ability to see clearly through both smoke and flames has been developed by researchers in Italy. The technology, which operates at a far-infrared wavelength, has potential for use in fire rescue situations where existing infrared cameras – while able to see through smoke – are blinded by the radiation given off by flames.
According to the researchers, this problem is caused by the need for a zoom lens within current cameras. It is this that focuses incoming light onto the digital sensor, forming an image. The lens, however, has the undesired effect of also focusing the infrared light emitted from flames, causing the sensor pixels to become saturated. The new imaging technique avoids this problem by switching to a lens-free, holographic system.
b) Planck (space mission) reveals 'almost perfect' universe
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2013/mar/21/planck-reveals-almost-perfect-universe
After more than two years of painstaking analysis, cosmologists working on the €700m Planck space mission have announced their first results. Speaking today at the headquarters of the European Space Agency (ESA) in Paris, the researchers have released the most precise measurement of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation – a remnant of the Big Bang – to date.
The results revise downwards the proportion of the universe made up by dark energy from 74% to 68.3%, while dark matter accounts for 26.8% of the total (up from 22%) and ordinary matter 4.9% (up from 4%). Planck also reveals that the universe is some 80million years older than thought, to put the age of the universe at 13.8billion years old. Planck scientists also say there is no evidence from the data of an additional fourth type of neutrino, which had been hinted at by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP).
c) A pioneering approach to cancer treatment - Proton therapy - Three short videos
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) is considered to be one of the leading hospitals in the US – in terms of both patient care and its cutting-edge medical research. In these short films, Physics World visits the MGH.
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/multimedia/2013/mar/14/a-pioneering-approach-to-cancer-treatment
In the first film, the chief of the hospital's physics division, Thomas Bortfeld, describes the hospital's pioneering cancer treatments at its proton-therapy centre. Bortfeld also shares his thoughts on what it is like to move from an academic research setting to the dynamic environment of a working hospital.
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/multimedia/2013/mar/21/targeting-tumours
The second describes proton therapy. This short film introduces the pencil-beam scanner, a way of firing protons at tumours with impressive precision. The pencil beam allows more precise shaping of the beam's range, as doctors can adjust the beam throughout the duration of the therapy as if they were painting the tumour.
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/multimedia/2013/mar/21/proton-therapy-teams-up-with-pet-imaging
The third film looks at combining proton therapy with PET Imaging. An innovative new system at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) is helping to reduce the uncertainties in proton therapy. In this short film, researchers at the MGH explain how they can fire a beam of protons at a tumour then check whether their beam has hit the intended target. The team had to devise a way to quickly transfer a patient to a PET scanner after proton therapy, without leaving them feeling seasick.