Subject Groups
Extreme physics 2007
22 & 23 September 2007
Question: What does it take to walk on fire, to walk on broken glass, to break arrows and bend steel using only your throat and to smash planks of wood?
Answer: 20 physics teachers on the first IOP Education Group Extreme Physics Weekend held at the NSLC in York at the end of September.
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It can be hard to persuade your headmaster to let you out of school for an INSET course unless it involves sitting through a tedious lecture by the senior examiner on why last year’s exam papers were flawless. We felt it would be more entertaining to entice people out for a weekend of genuine fun, mixing with like-minded colleagues and facing up to a few personal fears. Hence the idea of Extreme Physics. The weekend centred around a firewalk on the Saturday night, with all the delegates successfully completing the walk undamaged. We had all been briefed on the physics of it and had an idea of the role of conduction and heat capacity (rather than mind over matter) so having talked the talk we had to walk the walk…
On the Sunday morning delegates walked over broken glass without a scratch and a few of the braver (?) souls broke arrow tips and bent steel rebar against their throats. We finished up learning to break solid pine boards with our hands. Certainly a memory to carry with us next time we face up to a bolshy GCSE class. It wasn’t all frivolous. We learned about how physics has helped push sporting records over the last hundred years, how lasers can be used to reach temperatures a million times colder than outer space, the links between rock climbing and physics and how to use video cameras in the classroom.
All the activities were videoed and a DVD will be sent be sent to delegates for use in the classroom. Everyone went away enthused and ready to use the ideas in the classroom and insisting on having a email contact list set up to continue talking about it. A special issue of Physics Education will follow this up next year as well.
All in all it was a roaring success and one whose format we hope to repeat next year.
Ken Zetie (Hon Sec)
Presentations can be downloaded by clicking on the links below:
1. Using digital video cameras in the physics classroom.
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