New Ways to Teach and Learn Physics Your Solution for Helium Recovery Laboratory Scale Designed for Your Space and Needs
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physicsworld.com Volume 27 No 3 March 2014 s EDUCATIONNew ways to teach and learn physics Your Solution for Helium Recovery Laboratory scale designed for your space and needs. Liquid Helium Plants Over 130 units shipped worldwide since 2007 Helium Recovery System Over 35 units shipped worldwide since 2011 All Cryomech Liquid Helium Plants Include: Pulse Tube Cryocooler Technology- designed for high reliability with long mean times between maintenance Models available with liquefaction rates of 15L/Day, 22L/Day, 40L/Day and 60L/Day Liquefies helium supplied by cryostat boil-off, recovery systems or gas cylinders Digital touch screen user interface which includes: Remote Monitoring & Control Digital Level Indicator System Diagnostics Less than 24 hours between start up and liquid helium production COME VISIT US THE Complete Helium Recovery System AT APS MARCH MEETING ACROSS FROM THE LOUNGE Atmospheric Recovery Bag LHe Gas Bag @ 1 atm Extraction From User IN BOOTH 815 Cryostat Supply He > 99.99% Complete Cryomech Helium Helium Recovery Recovery System Includes: Compressor Atmospheric Recovery Bag Gas Cylinders Liquid Helium Plant (LHeP) Helium Recovery Compressor LN2 Trap Manifold for cylinder storage Helium Purifier Helium Purifier Liquid Helium Plant Cryomech also provides Helium Reliquefiers for use with individual cryostats. WORLD LEADERS IN CRYOREFRIGERATION FOR MORE THAN 50 YEARS 113 Falso Drive, Syracuse, New York, 13211 USA • Ph. 315-455-2555 Fax. 315-455-2544 www.cryomech.com [email protected] Untitled-2 1 17/02/2014 09:19 physicsworld.com Contents: March 2014 Working abroad Graduate careers special 61–65 Get em young Why coding is vital to physics 27–29 Open learning The pros and cons of MOOCs 43–46 Quanta 3 Education 19 Frontiers 4 First image of cosmic web filament taken ● Physicists create Forum 21 analogue of magnetic monopoles in ultracold gas ● Flying Taking modern physics into schools Martin Hendry “jellyfish” is self-stabilizing ● Working out why wet skin wrinkles ● Pyramid powers polarizing light source using quantum dots Critical Point 25 Feynman’s failings Robert P Crease News & Analysis 6 Journal restarts after misconduct charge ● Dutch opt for open Computing in the classroom 27 access ● Free journal access for UK library users● Italian space University physics students often face a steep learning curve when boss resigns in corruption probe● India to build huge solar park they first meet programming, but teaching it at school could ● Cash boost for US science● Chinese dark-matter detector change all that, reports Jon Cartwright fires up ● Critics warn against US Air Force move ● Malfunction hits China’s lunar rover ● Researchers’ reading hits the buffers The power of YouTube 31 Philip Moriarty describes his experiences in front of the camera as ● China establishes five innovation centres● CERN plans for one of the stars of the Sixty Symbols series of science videos LHC successor Rules of engagement 36 Feedback 14 Fran Scott reveals her golden rules of explaining science to kids, Letters, online comments and other messages on evidence for including the importance of a carefully crafted learning outcome dark matter, the role of imagination in science, quantum parallelism, ice spikes in your bird bath, ball lightning and more Learning by doodling 40 Louise Mayor explores the benefits of taking image-heavy lecture Reviews 52 notes, as illustrated by a specially commissioned example, which ● Symmetry throughout physics ● Life in US and Soviet nuclear brings a classic Richard Feynman lecture to life cities ● Web life: AstroEDU The MOOC point 43 Graduate Careers 61 Massive open online courses are changing the education ● Working abroad ● All the latest graduate vacancies and courses landscape, as James Dacey discovers Recruitment 76 Thinking like a scientist 48 Eugenia Etkina and Gorazd Planinšicˇ show how the latest research Lateral Thoughts 80 into education can help how physics is taught But it’s obvious! David Pye On the cover Physics World is published monthly as 12 is sues Education: new ways to teach and per annual volume by IOP Publishing Ltd, Temple Circus, Temple Way, Bristol BS1 6HG, UK Multimedia learn physics 19–51 (Shutterstock/Petr Vaclavek) United States Postal Identification Statement Haran Brady Physics World (ISSN 0953-8585) is published Check out the digital version of monthly by IOP Publishing Ltd, Temple Circus, Physics World for videos on: Temple Way, Bristol BS1 6HG, UK. Air freight and mailing in the USA by Sheridan Press. 450 Fame ● The power of MOOCs (p43) Avenue, Hanover PA 17331. US Postmaster: ● send address changes to Physics World, Explaining science on YouTube (p31) IOP Publishing, PO Box 320, Congers, ● Richard Feynman in action (p40) NY 10920-0320, USA. Physics World March 2014 1 Untitled-1 1 16/12/2013 09:25 physicsworld.com Quanta For the record Seen and heard It is baffling that in our modern world left the scientists puzzled because this we have such blind trust in science NASA type of leech never normally experiences Prince Charles quoted in the Guardian temperatures less than a few degrees The first in line to the British throne says that below 0 °C. The leech also smashes people widely accept what science tells them – the previous record for a living object except when it comes to climate change, adding surviving a dunking, which was held by that climate deniers belong to the “headless tiny, eight-legged “water bears” and the chicken brigade”. larvae of one type of drosophilid fly, both of which lasted for just an hour. It would be worse than trying to reconstruct a book that you burned The designated survivor Mushrooms on Mars? The nuclear physicist and current US from its ashes You may remember the story of Walter energy secretary Ernest Moniz may Physicist Don Page from the University of Wagner, the Hawaii resident who went be 14th in the US presidential line of Alberta quoted in Nature to court to try to stop CERN’s Large succession, but if something really terrible In a new paper, Stephen Hawking suggests Hadron Collider (LHC) from starting, had happened in late January, he might that matter that gets sucked into a black hole before a judge threw out the case. Well, have found himself leading the world’s could be held behind the event horizon, with now another science-themed lawsuit biggest economy. That is because Moniz the information not being destroyed but rather has been filed, this time to force NASA was appointed “designated survivor” scrambled and then released back out through to investigate a strange white-coloured while US president Barack Obama Hawking radiation. object that its Opportunity rover spotted delivered his State of the Union address. on Mars. NASA released a photo of the The speech, which is attended by the I now know the size of the universe weird-looking entity, which was not visible country’s top leaders, including the vice- on 26 December 2013 but appeared in an president, members of the US cabinet better than I know the size of my image taken of the same spot on 8 January and Supreme Court justices, is where US house (see above). Despite wild speculation on presidents outline their legislative agenda Physicist David Schlegel from the Lawrence the Internet, NASA concluded that it was for the coming year. A designated survivor Berkeley National Laboratory quoted on the BBC “clearly a rock”. But that was not enough is a member of the cabinet who stays at a Astronomers working at the Baryon Oscillation for “scientist and astrobiologist” Rhawn distant, secure and undisclosed location Spectroscopic Survey announced that they had Joseph, who is so sure that the rock is during the address to maintain continuity measured the distance between galaxies in the in fact a living organism, more closely of government in the event of a natural universe to an accuracy of 1%. resembling “a mushroom-like fungus”, disaster or terrorist attack that ends up that he has filed an 11-page lawsuit in killing officials in the presidential line of California to make NASA examine succession. Of course, nothing untoward I’ve heard it described as playing the object in more detail. He has also happened, so Moniz did not find himself battleship apparently attempted to contact NASA as leader of the world’s richest nation. Physicist Gray Rybka from the University of boss Charles Bolden and other senior staff The question remains, however, where Washington quoted on KPLU news at the agency to persuade them to examine was Moniz during the speech? Having Rybka says that hunting for dark-matter the object more fully, so far to no avail. emerged with his trademarks flowing grey particles has similarities to playing the famous If the object is indeed biological, Joseph hair intact, at least we know Moniz wasn’t two-player game. also wants NASA to acknowledge that he at the hairdressers. made the discovery and that he appears as first author on and has “final editorial Star panties It’s a wonderful opportunity, but with approval” of the first six scientific articles How about getting yourself a bit of fear and trepidation as well published by NASA on this discovery. Any a nice pair of glow-in- Space scientist Maggie Aderin-Pocock quoted guesses how long it will be before Joseph’s the-dark solar system in the Guardian writ follows that of Wagner? underwear? The online Aderin-Pocock is taking over as a main shop “makeitgoodpdx”, etsy.com/makeitgoodpdx presenter of the long-running BBC TV series Cold leech which is based in Oregon, US, is selling The Sky at Night. All Physics World readers must have at the garments for £11.34 through Etsy. some point in their lives dipped a banana Available in sizes ranging from XS to into liquid nitrogen and then shattered XL, the solar system print was hand- One minute we’re eating pizza then the frozen object into pieces.