Science Fair Project - the final sprint

 

It's that time of year, we're entering the final few weeks before the finished projects are displayed to the Oak House world. The playgrounds are amok with activity with students beginning to carry out their experiments using the other students as their participants. Some of the most interesting projects include:

• Do different types of chocolate affect our ability to learn new abilities using hand-eye coordination?

• How many values can you understand at a glance (without counting) and what affects this? 

• When should we add the milk to a coffee to ensure it stays warm for longer?

• Will smaller children endure a choice they dislike to gain a greater reward, or will they choose something they prefer to gain a smaller reward.

• What affects a person’s ability to repeat musical notes?

This last project was inspired by the famous experiments on learning:

One of the findings was that chess masters have an amazing memory for patterns on the chess board – able to recall the positions of all the pieces after only a brief glance. Follow-up work showed that they only have this ability if the patterns conform to possible positions in a legal game of chess. When pieces are positioned on the board randomly, however, chess grandmasters have as poor memories as anyone else.

What will the outcomes be? Come to visit us on the 20th of April for the Science Fair day when the students will present their experiments to everyone in the school and visitors.

Ones gravitatòries

Per començar us farà falta una mica d'imaginació:

Imagineu-vos una pantalla negra, de sobte apareix una data (com ho faci depén de la teva imaginació)

11 de febrer de 2016

Desapareix la data i entra una frase, acompanyada de música, o no, (aquí torna a dependre de la teva imaginació)

Una nova fita a la física experimental.

La frase canvia i es pot llegir (sí, un altre cop has d'utilitzar la imaginació):

Equiparable al primer ús astronòmic del telescopi.

I finalment, ...

S'ha anunciat la detecció d'ones gravitatòries al LIGO.

The birth of gravitational wave astronomy! pic.twitter.com/UbMcJvOnHw— LIGO (@LIGO) February 11, 2016

És un primer pas que ens permetra conèixer millor l'Univers, tot i que pot portar un temps. Des de l'ús del telescopi per Galileu fins als telescopis actuals han passat 400 anys. I cada millorar en aquest aparell va portar un millor coneixement del que ens envolta: primer les llunes de Júpiter, la Lluna, els anells de Saturn, les galàxies, les supernoves, ... l'astronomia en el rang del no visible, ...

Les ones gravitacionals, predites a la Relativitat General fa 100 anys, mai detectades fins ara, ens podrien permetre observar els primers instants de l'Univers, comprendre millor alguns fenòmens astrofísics, ...

La seva detecció ha estat possible gràcies a un dels aparells més precisos dels que disposem, el LIGO. Aquí podreu seguir les darreres notícies


Aquí va una explicació per tots els públics.

Visiting MIT student to Oak House

For the last two and a half weeks we have had the pleasure of the help of a University student from MIT. Deepti Raghavan, from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, has been helping us with classes of Physics, technology, Maths and Chemistry. She has also been relating her experiences to our students to help them in their choices for University. This is Deepti telling us about herself:

I am a university student from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, here at Oak House School, for a teaching program for 3 weeks. I am participating in a program called “Global Teaching Labs” where students from MIT get to travel to various countries and teach STEM subjects at schools abroad. I have been lucky enough to be able to participate here in Barcelona, helping the teachers with various math, physics, chemistry, and technology classes at Oak House for students in 4^th ESO and older.

I am currently in my 3^rd year of university, out of 4, majoring in computer science. The MIT curriculum requires students to take physics, chemistry and math classes to graduate. I was able to draw on my courses and MIT and my high school to help with these classes. I have also had the chance to teach Python Programming with some of Mr. Raig’s technology and math classes. I only started to learn how to program 2 years ago at MIT, so I am really excited to see high school students starting at a younger age!

In particular, I have been working with the students in both the HL IB1 Math class and 4^th ESO technology classes on writing some Python code. I have never taught programming before, so part of this experience involved figuring out the best way of explaining some harder concepts in computer science to the students. Luckily, at Oak House, the class sizes are quite small, so I could give a lot of personal attention to the students to help them debug their programs.

I started with some concepts in computer science: what is a computer language, why do we use them, how variables and types work, how functions work. I chose to do the tutorial in Python because Python is very readable compared to other languages, so it would be easier for students to grasp. The students seem to be interested in coding and the applications of computer science in general! They are working on writing functions that apply some of the mathematical concepts they have been learning: to solve for the roots of a quadratic equation, or to approximate sine and cosine using the Maclaurin series. The next task involved writing an encoding and decoding scheme for words based on shifting the alphabet, a problem that applies knowledge of all the data structures the students have learned about.

I have also tried to introduce them to some other aspects of computer science that I have learned over the years. Last January I participated in a web design competition, so I have told them a little about how websites work. In one session we talked about algorithms – and sorting algorithms, in particular. Initially, at the university level, I struggled because I did not have any computer science background. I believe it can help in any industry to have some knowledge of programming/software. I hope they continue to work on their own when I leave!

Diamond particles discovered in candle flames

Candle flames contain millions of tiny diamond particles, a university professor has discovered.

Dr Wuzong Zhou, of St Andrews University, found about 1.5 million diamond nanoparticles are created in a candle flame every second it burns.

The diamond particles are burned away in the process.

But the chemistry professor said the discovery could lead to research into how diamonds could be created more cheaply.

Dr Zhou used a new sampling technique to remove particles from the centre of the flame, which is believed to have never been done, and found it contained all four known forms of carbon.

He said: "This was a surprise, because each form is usually created under different conditions.

"This will change the way we view a candle flame forever."

The first candle is said to have been invented in China more than 2,000 years ago.

Previous research has shown hydro-carbon molecules at the bottom of the flame are converted into carbon dioxide by the top of the flame.

But, until now, the process in between has remained a mystery, with the discovery of the diamond nanoparticles, as well as fullerenic particles and graphitic and amorphous carbon.

Courtesy of BBC News

See the article here with some other interesting links here!!

The BBC news website is a very useful resource when it comes to explaning certain Scientific and environmental phenomenon. Just scroll down through Science/environment articles and you'll find them!

Happy reading and don't burn yourself trying to get those nano diamonds!

ENRICHMENT PROJECT SCIENCE

Quin plaer observar i ajudar als alumnes a que gaudeixin fent ciència!

Els treballs  aquest trimestre han estat els següents:

Líquids no Newtonians

Pollets a Oak House

Conills, pollastres, bens, s’assemblen a nosaltres?

Qui ha estat l’assassí?

Hi ha alguna relació entre el coeficient intel·lectual i la capacitat física?

Els alumnes han triat el projecte i l’han desenvolupat per complet. Han après com posar a la pràctica la seva recerca  seguint el mètode científic i finalment han exposat els seu treball.

A continuació teniu els enllaços per poder accedir a algun d’aquest treballs.

Us recomano que hi cliqueu són molt divertits!

Mobile phone collection in January 2016

Dear parents/students

In Spain more than 52,000,000 mobile phone lines exist today, for just over 46 million inhabitants. This impressive number of terminals must be added those older phones that are replaced and that citizens have kept or thrown away, with the recycling rate of less than 5%. If we multiply these numbers to the countries of the "developed world ", the figures are staggering. At the same time, the exploitation of Coltan, a valuable mineral from which the technology of our phones, computers and consoles are made of, is at the center of the conflicts that produce hundreds of thousands of victims and refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Illegal mining uses slavery work also destroying the habitats of many species such as chimpanzees and gorillas in true danger due to poaching and deforestation.

For this reason, if we recycle our old mobile phones, less Coltan will need to be mined and fewer forests will have to be destroyed, therefore we will be able to reduce the rate of deforestation and protect the habitat of many species in danger.

As part of the school’s consistent approach to minimise its environmental impact, it has been decided to support the Jane Goodall Institute in their campaign to recycle mobile phones.

The school will be contributing to this campaign by hosting a collection of used mobile phones that you might not need anymore. Chances are that you have at least one old mobile phone somewhere around the house, so this is the perfect opportunity to finally get rid of it! The collection will begin on January 11th and will last for a week. Students will come to your classes in the morning to collect your old mobiles.

We just need the mobile phone with the battery,

NO charger, NO SIM card!

By participating in this, the school will enter a raffle with the chance to win the adoption of a chimpanzee. If you’d like to learn more about the institute check out their website:


http://www.janegoodall.org/

We would truly appreciate your collaboration and please feel free to contact us if you have any doubts!





January 11th to 15th 2016


for more information look at http://www.mobilerecyclingday.org/

Bojos per la…../Crazy about……?

Who is bojos/crazy and what are they crazy/bojos about?

The answer is that Adriana C. (does she seem familiar) and Isabel L. (and her too) have both been accepted onto a bojos course. So what is it about?

Isabel L.  has been accepted onto the Bojos per la Natura program. It takes place two Saturdays a month from February to November 2016. There is both fieldwork and visits to laboratories and research centres throughout Catalunya. Some activities include marine biology, paleontology and going to the Delta del Ebro. The activities are directed by researchers working in the ICTA (Institut de Ciencia i Tecnologia Ambientals) which is in the UAB. For more information follow this link: http://ictaweb.uab.cat/natura.php

Adriana C. will be doing the Crazy About Biomedicine program

It's a year-long program directed to students in the first year of baccalaureate and it takes place in the labs at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine of Barcelona (IRB). The course combines practical and theoretical lessons to cover 12 hot topics in the area of biomedicine, ranging from rational drug design to the study of novel cancer treatments, and allows students to get a taste of what it's like to investigate in an international research institute such as the IRB. 

For more information on this look at: http://www.irbbarcelona.org/en/events/crazy-about-biomedicine-2016

Well done to the both of them again! These ladies will go far in the world of Science!

The best writing on Maths

Do you want to read some of the best articles written about Maths? 

(I know this isn't Science, but hey, where would we be without the mathematicians?)

Read these highly recommended articles!

Candy Crush's Puzzling Mathematics

The Quest for Randomness

Twisted Math and Beautiful Geometry

and finally....

The Statistical Crisis in Science

Enjoy the read and thanks to our anonymous donor!

Powdered glue goes on dry and sticks when squished

This was an article that appeared recently in New Scientist.

Have you ever gone for the superglue to find that it has hardened. When you're in technology class and you reach for the glue gun and burn yourself. And then there's the problem of trying to get that glue , super or gun, into the really awkward position without getting glue everywhere. Well these researchers in Japan may have just found the solution to all of those problems.

Have a read of the article and look at the video here!

Here we have material scientists who have identified a shortcoming and come up with a solution. This is what I love about Science!

This article was sent to us by a parent of one our students (both who shall remain nameless and mysterious). Thanks and more please!

Vols ser astronauta?

T'has plantejat mai ser astronauta? Saps que fa falta per ser astronauta a la NASA? 

FONT: 5 Myths About Becoming an Astronaut 

És a dir, a banda d'una bona condició física, és necessari una carrera relacionada amb la ciència, la tecnologia, l'enginyeria o les matemàtiques (STEM en anglès).