Science Education & Policy

Print Your Own Universe There is a great educational resource available on the web: card models. I remember first1 making such models as a small child.  I can say from memory that folding paper and card in three dimensions is a great way to get an intuitive feel for three dimensional geometry. The great thing about making models as a child is that you don't realise just how much science you are learning.  With guidance from a good teacher, small children can learn a lot about the universe just from making models. What causes earthquakes?What's inside a volcano?Build an observatory…

A physics professor was telling me yesterday that her daughter was having trouble understanding real and virtual images formed by lenses.  That was until she showed her a real image being formed on a sheet of paper by a (spectacle?) lens.[1]  The curriculum (which you all must follow or you will be sent to the salt mines!) only included ray tracing. And this was at a “good” school.  It seems that our teachers are being frustrated by the production of all these “Jobs for Little Stalins” (of which Britain has so many) that our educational bureaucracy has contrived over the years…

To give a link in another topic, I shortly cover the meaning of not so common, but very important term - metahypothesis. Metahypothesis is formed by a number of other hypothesis - when you take some hypotheses and put them together, you get metahypothesis. Lets look an example. Assume that we consider two hypothesis - that A is two times B and that A is three times B. We think that they are both considerably strong hypothesis. Thus, we will form a metahypothesis. It contains the following formulae:A = (2 + C) * B Where C is a constant variable. It's a variable on metalevel, with allowed…

Please indulge me a charming aside from A.A. Milne in order to set the stage for my essay…. (don’t worry, it’s charming) The House at Pooh Corner (pg 93-94)In Which Pooh Invents a New Game and Eeyore Joins In … One day, when Pooh was walking towards this bridge, he was trying to make up a piece of poetry about fir-cones… So he picked a fir-cone up and looked at it, and said to himself, “This is a very good fir-cone and something ought to rhyme to it.” ... he had just come to the bridge, and not looking where he was going, he tripped over something, and the fir-cone jerked out of his paw…

Today kicked off the 2010 H+ Summit, "The Rise of the Citizen Scientist". You can watch the livestream here. I'll blog about it tomorrow, after I get some sleep! No one wants to read what I have to say on 6 hours sleep over the last two days. :) GREAT time here in Boston!!!

Let's pretend the US is in a bit of an economic crunch and, due to that, universities which up to now have had carte blanche to raise costs any time they like (average - double the rate of inflation but for quality schools, much higher), as much as they like, in the interests of 'quality', are now discovering that parents don't have unlimited money. So when Nature Publishing Group decides to boost its subscription costs for the University of California 400% for their 67 journals it is tough finding someone to root for.   California is swimming in debt but the University of California is…

I complain every time we have a family dinner at my sister’s house. Don’t get me wrong, I like my family and everything, but she moved with her daughter and son way out to the remotest parts of central Ohio and it takes forever to get there. But certain benefits are hard to measure. This is her son, my nephew, with the smaller of their two Great Danes in the background. I’ll try to spare you the ‘cutest-nephew-in-the-world, proud uncle’ stuff. The thing is he’s holding a big, huge bullfrog that he “rescued” from the big Great Dane, and returned to the pond in…

Eighteen year-old James Popper, from Marlborough College, Wiltshire, has scooped major prizes at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, in San Jose, California from 9-14 May. Competing against 1600 students from around the world his achievements included:  - Intel ISEF Electrical and Mechanical Engineering category winner of $3,000 plus $5,000 scholarship and $1,000 grant to his school - Invitation to the prestigious 'Stockholm International Youth Science Seminar' during the Nobel Prize Ceremonies - US Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Foundation…

First, I have to apologize for my extended absence from both this site and my blog... I've not only been experiencing some career path type crises, but also studying for, taking, and hopefully passing comps.  Comps, or comprehensive exams or qualifying exams, are what students in Ph.D. track programs take at the completion of all the course work (usually) or around the end of the third year in the program. From what I know of them - so mostly in applied psychology fields - they literally encompass anything you might have learned in a course (or were expected to learn) or what might have…

First, I have to apologize for my extended absence from both this site and my blog... I've not only been experiencing some career path type crises, but also studying for, taking, and hopefully passing comps. Comps, or comprehensive exams or qualifying exams, are what students in Ph.D. track programs take at the completion of all the course work (usually) or around the end of the third year in the program. From what I know of them - so mostly in applied psychology fields - they literally encompass anything you might have learned in a course (or were expected to learn) or what might have…