Here is a link to a video clip on the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bang/handson/super_cool.shtml
It shows you how to super cool water to be less than 0 oC ….
Triple A Learning IB Blogs
September 30, 2010
Ditch those Powerpoints and whiteboards…
…And try out Prezi. Prezi is a trendy presentation tool, marketed to replace Powerpoint. The cool part about Prezi is that it allows you to create a visual presentation that is not linear. This means you can zoom in and out making links between different aspects of anthropology. Even better, teachers and students can sign up for a spiffy account for free. With your account, you can make your presentations public, search the presentations of others, or choose to keep your presentations private. You can also invite colleagues or students to edit your presentation, allowing it to be a collaborative project.
The best way to learn more about this is to try it out! I have begun a first attempt at a Prezi that shows links between different aspects of anthropological theory. It could be made much better with images, sounds, a clear ‘path’, and more explanation. Send me your email and I will ‘invite you’ to edit this Prezi – what an opportunity for anthropology teachers to collaboratively create an (eventually) awesome presentation!
September 29, 2010
Gas Chromatography
Today’s annalytic video from the RSC is on Gas Chromatography.
Happy watching! 
September 28, 2010
Historiography and World War I
At this time of year, many teachers are engaged in the causes of World War I. This is an interesting subject from a historian’s perspective because there are so many points of view, but students are sometimes confused by all of this.
The origins of World War I are an ideal place to introduce historiography to them as there has been so much written on the subject and there are so many ways of looking at it with ideological and national perspectives as the two main ways of looking at this subject.
Infra Red Spectrometry
This seems to be turning into a mini theme!
Today’s featured youtube clip is of an Infrared Spectrometer – again, courtesy of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Enjoy!
Challenges in our Arts classes
This short 7 minutes film, Hiyab by Xavi Salas, shows the reality of quite a lot of the classrooms of the world today. The camera chooses to focus on the diversity of students who are trying to show and express their own identity. Unfortunately, the attitude of the teacher does not understand that respecting her students means understanding them in their own identity. My impression after watching the film is that it is very easy to lose the richness of diversity that a classroom like this can have, and that it is very easy to lose the opportunity to appreciate what each student brings to the classroom.
September 27, 2010
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectrometry
Following on from yesterdays Mass Spectrometry posting, here is another clip from the RSC showing NMR.
They are pretty neat clips and summarise everything nicely.
September 26, 2010
Mass Spectrometry
The Royal Society of Chemistry have put together a number of good video clips on annalytical techniques.
Here is one they made about mass spectrometry.
Do retractions cast doubt on peer review? Buck, Wakefield
In our era, we depend greatly on science for some of our most important public and private decisions: we turn to science for evaluation of the safety and benefits of the food we put in our mouths and the medical treatments we take, or for knowledge on global warming and alternative energy sources. When a peer reviewed article by a Nobel laureate is retracted from a prestigious journal, then, we have reason to take note and wonder about the breakdown of our of our most significant forms of validating scientific knowledge: peer review.
With an apology, Linda Buck has this month retracted a 2006 paper on how odours stimulate brain cells in mice, on the basis that she has been unable to replicate the published findings in her own lab. In 2008, she also retracted a 2001 paper published in Nature, the highly reputable journal on science, after finding inconsistencies in the data on which the conclusions were based.
Creativity, Copyright, and the I.B. Film Program
I happened to attend a presentation of Apple’s latest version of iMovie today, and it began with the importing of copyright music into the program, marking beats on the audio-track, and then importing photographs that were edited by automatically locking to the marks on the music track. ‘Cutting on the beat’ has been made almost effortless by Apple.
Sigh . . . the presentation to (mostly non-film) teachers will encourage them to introduce their students to skills that I will ultimately require the students to abandon.
Read more…