| Summary: | Forces can be a subject that science teachers find difficult to teach, particularly if physics is not their specialism. Steve Hearn from the Institute of Physics visits a group of physics non-specialists from the London Borough of Barnet to offer up ideas on how to approach this subject. Steve starts his introduction to forces with a bazooka, a home-made, partially evacuated tube, which fires missiles at a target. He explores how the bazooka works and what forces are acting on the missile. Steve also introduces a bubble investigation where air bubbles are released in glycerol and rise up a small container. David Crossley, on a Teach First scheme, tries out this investigation with a year 7 group. The teachers and the pupils make their predictions with some surprising results.
Steve Hearn from the Institute of Physics shows a group of non-specialist physics teachers from the London Borough of Barnet how to approach the subject of electricity at KS3, a topic which teachers and students find difficult. He introduces them to a torch with no batteries, an electrical board which allows students to connect a wide variety of components in a circuit, and fruit batteries. One of the teachers in the group, then takes on the task of teaching electricity to her Year 9 group. The students use the electricity board for the first time, work out how to generate electricity using a shaky torch with no batteries and discover whether batteries made out of tomatoes are better than those made from bananas and other fruit.
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