Communicating passion for physics to students

Frank Mulligan

Teaching Heroes – Lightning TalksWorkshop 10 December 2015

“Seeing the world through the lens of physics”

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Physics is all around usRecent movies

Black holesNational Summit for Enhancement of

Teaching and Learning

Hexadecimal

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Cinema in 3D

Audience wearing special glasses watch a 3D "stereoscopic film" at the Telekinema on the South Bank in London during the Festival of Britain 1951.

The archetypal 3D glasses, with modern red and cyan color filters, similar to the red/green and red/blue lenses used to view early anaglyph films.

Resembling sunglasses, RealD circular polarized glasses are now the standard for theatrical releases and theme park attractions.

polarized glasses

National Summit for Enhancement of Teaching and Learning

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Q2, right

y

x

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P2P1Q1, left

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projector3-D glasses

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Large Hadron Collider Higgs Boson

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson#/media/File:Candidate_Higgs_Events_in_ATLAS_and_CMS.png

Standard Model of particle physics

Large Hadron Collider tunnel at CERN

National Summit for Enhancement of Teaching and Learning

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Nobel Prize

https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2014/popular-physicsprize2014.pdfNational Summit for Enhancement of

Teaching and Learning

25% of world’s electricity consumption is used for lighting

William C. Campbell

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George Boole 1815-1864

How George Boole’s zeros and ones changed the world by Peter Lynch That’s Maths The Irish Times, 4 December 2014

How George Boole gave birth to “pure maths” Mary Mulvihill The Irish Times, 11 December 2014

150th Anniversary of his death on 8 December 2014

Articles in media

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Biographies

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Make it fun engagement

The Simpson’s

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New ways of learning – relevant to students

Phone app - AndroSensor Christmas shopping

list item

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Water meter project

http://www.instructables.com/id/Monitoring-residential-water-usage-by-reading-muni/?ALLSTEPS

National Summit for Enhancement of Teaching and Learning

National Summit for Enhancement of Teaching and Learning

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Give prompt, high quality feedback on submitted work

Weekly feedback!

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What did Teaching Hero award mean to me?

1. Delighted to get award. Especially pleased that it was from students.

2. A lot of lip service paid to the importance of good teaching.

3. First tangible acknowledgement of the value of teaching in 33 years

4. Problem with any award scheme

– a small number of happy people

– a very large number of less happy people - many of whom are

great teachers!