Personal Blog
American football – Torbay Trojans Training 20/8/2023
Training;
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Team Status
We are rebuilding the team, looking for players, coaches and support personnel. Please see team social media for information.
Please join us on this journey.
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#Trojans,#Football,#Training,#TorbayTrojans, #AlwaysTrojan
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STEM Group 9th September 2023
From September the STEM group will start to focus more on the Science, Technology, Engineering and maths, rather than computing which can be done at Code Club,
As a result, we will be in Room 12, so that we have access to the Science and other equipment stored there. The IT learning centre will be CLOSED.
I have a few activity ideas in mind based on what happened in August.
Please get in touch for further details. I will also post a update to what is planned shortly.
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New method to determine age of stars
Universe today article looking at some research on a new way to determine how old stars are. This is important as we develop more of an understanding of how our universe evolved, and with data from JWST brining up more questions, there is still a lot to learn.
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#stellarevolution #starclusters #stellarage
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STEM Group 12/8/2023 Write up
The session today was a steady stream of people in to room 12. We had a few things going on:-
Sand box craters
Dropping stones in to a tray of sand to simulate meteors hitting the surface of a planet or moon and resulting in craters. Interactive activity. The planning for this is here Magnesium in Vinegar
This was a demonstration so adding some Magnesium ribbon to some Vinegar in conical flask. This was topped up with more Magnesium a few times during the session.
Magnets
I set out a magnet and various different materials, including copper coins, paper clips and eventually added a spatula, Magnesium ribbon and copper foil so visitors could experiment to see which materials were magnetic.
Programmable Caterpillar
This is an electronic teaching aide, The idea is that the different segments have different instructions, for example; Forward, Left, Right, Play music, the segments can be put connected together in different orders so that pressing the start button the caterpillar moves around as per instructions, this proved really popular.
Bubbles
Using pre-prepared bubble solution, that has Sugar as an ingredient, bubbles can be made so they can be caught and not pop as easily, this again proved popular and we managed to get bubbles to stick together, make bug bubbles and even bounce bubbles around on some material.
Ball Shooter
This is a kit that I built up last year, the idea is the two spinning disks propel a ping pong ball forward.
Hair Dryer ping pong ball balancing
Using a Hair dryer in an upright position, it is possible to balance a ping pong ball on the air pocket produced by the dryer. This is a demonstration of Bernoulli’s Principle an explanation of this and the experiment can be found here
Simple Acid / Alkalis
I got out some of the test tube racks & test tubes and we had a go at seeing what happens when red cabbage indicator is added to vinegar and Bicarbonate of soda solution. This went well, we even had a go at mixing the solutions but extended this to include mixing Bicarbonate of Soda powder with citric acid powder, then adding water to produce a reaction.
Conclusion
So in all a very good session, and it generated some interest and ideas for the session in September. I also proved that I can communicate with children, young people and adults and run activities that are engaging and have a fun, learning element to them too.
Next STEM group
The next STEM group event will take place on the 9th September. I will post updates to this blog too.
Tags
#PaigntonLibrarySTEMGroup,#PaigntonLibrary,#FamilyEvent,#Science,#Craters
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Jupyter Notebook
This article on Jupyter notebook ties in nicely with a previous article on Scientific Writing so another really interesting article relating to this posted to the fediverse. This gives some useful tips and tricks to help you make the most of this powerful software.
You can read the article on Makeuseof here
Links
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#Tech #MakeUseOf #TechNews #IT via @morganeogerbc #ProductivityTricks #ProductivityTips #Programming #CodingTips #Python,#JupyterNotebook
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STEM Group 12/8/2023
The next stem group will be on Saturday 12th August 2023, 11am to 15:00. But will be slightly different.
Due to a Fun Family Festival taking place, which I am helping with as it also ties in nicely with the STEM group. I am planning an activity around:-
As a result, IT LEARNING CENTRE WILL BE CLOSED
The main Stem group blog is here.
For information contact Paignton Library directly with regard to any questions about this.
Next STEM group
The next STEM group event will take place on the 9th September
Tags
#PaigntonLibrarySTEMGroup,#PaigntonLibrary,#FamilyEvent,#Science,#Craters
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Supporting student collaboration
This is a really interesting article on supporting student collaboration.
How to set up opportunities for student collaboration that sets them up for success
You can read the article here
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#Collaboration,#LifeSkills,#Students,#TeamWork
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Scientific writing
So carrying on with a similar theme as yesterday, I found an interesting article posted to the Fediverse looking at Markdown vs. LaTeX for Scientific Writing
So am sharing here as it may be of interest.
Related Links
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#Science,#Writing,#LaTeX,#Markdown,#Comparison
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Using LaTeX in Markdown.
There are a lot of platforms that use Markdown as the main way of helping writers format their text so it looks nice and conveys their message efficiently.
If you are a scientist, then you may want to include more specialist text, such as subscripts, formulae, etc within you text. Using laTeX is a good way to do this. Using MathJaX allows you to get the best of both worlds.
The article here How to use LaTeX in Markdown
Guides you through how to integrate LaTeX with Markdown.
Related Links
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#Writing,#Markdown,#LaTeX,#MathJax,#Math,#Formulae,#Science
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Monomer Synthesis
As I have been looking in to how we can replace products that are derived from crude oil. A conversation on fedi,. which you can access here. You may need to scroll down to where it says
polymers are made from monomers, monomers such as ethene, styrene, vinyl chloride et al don't *have* to come from oil. You can synthesise them from carbon dioxide & water & a few others using green energy. It's just not thermodynamically favourable or cheap.
Making these from Carbon Dioxide, Water and other chemicals and utilising green energy are detailed here. However as stated this is not thermodynamically favourable or cheap. however it does show that it can be done.
For clarity, Ethene and Ethylene are the same. Ethene is the official UPAC name. cite Wikidiff
Tags
#Science,#Chemistry,#Monomers,#Ethene,#Styrene,#VinylChloride,#Synthesis
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