KS3            KS4            KS5 Salters Horners        KS5 AEB

 

Links for Karin Parker's lessons

 

Updated 17 June 2001

General: (there are more links on the resources page)

 

New Scientist  - website contains articles from the magazine, past and  present.

How stuff works - a huge site that will answer most questions about how gadgets work - some of this is also on the school's intranet

Interactive periodic table

 

 

 

 

KS3:

 

 

What would a holiday on other planets be like ? Check space holidays

SATs revision - BBC bitesize

 

 

 

KS4: 

 

 

 

GCSE revision - BBC bitesize

Your syllabus - MEG Double Award Suffolk Science

Electricity demand profiles including a graph of how demand changed during the England v Germany Euro 96 game

 

Animation to test your ideas about freefall and terminal velocity - excellent

 

Stopping distances - a table ; an article about how light condtions can alter reaction times and stopping distances

How physics helps forensic scientists in road traffic accident investigations

The Highway Code; stopping distances section

Facts about seatbelts (from the 1998 Belt Up campaign); ROSPA seat belt information sheet

 

Star life cycles - try and put the pictures in age order

 

Education Guide to Space (Leicester University) - good background information and a tour of the planets.

 

Energy saving and efficiency

Watt Watcher's energy saving projects homepage (US based)

includes a useful page of energy saving tips and a comparison of the real cost of 'cheap' filament bulbs compared to their energy saving alternatives

A page of links to Energy Advice Services

Energy Saving Trust - click the links for 'your home'; you can look at where energy is wasted by many appliances in your home. Full of information but may take a while to load.

 

Non-renewable Energy Resources

Government paper about how efficient fossil-fuel fired power stations are

Combined heat and power - how some power stations use 'wasted' heat usefully

Guardian newspaper article about how reliant we are on fossil fuels

An article on the safety of nuclear power plants

British Energy fact files - loads of data about nuclear power

How a nuclear power station is decommissioned; there is a section on cost but it's not very clear! It shows that it costs £4.6 billion pounds a year for decommissioning.

Oneworld site on energy - lots of information in one place - particularly useful for nuclear energy

The economics of nuclear power (Nuclear Issues Briefing paper) including graphs showing selective use of statistics

Renewable Energy Resources

Yorkshire Electricity's education pages - basic background to energy resources

Energy supplies (thanks to Angus Gregson for this lot!)

All types:

dti site                       another dti site ; their education pack             eduweb                

 Australian government site                   SWEB site             

Hydroelectricity:

waterpower                   Dinorwic                  Hydroelectricity        

Solar                      

Tidal                Tidal again                  Tidal (bit hard going)                      

Wave              Wave  again                     

Wind              Wind again                               

 

Waves

 

An article on the refraction of earthquake waves

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

KS5: 

 

There are many animations/demos at 'Computer animations of Physical Processes' (Siltech)

Excellent videos of many processes - the waves section is particularly useful.

 

AEB

 

How things fly - Bernoulli's and fluid flow

The Concorde crash problem sheet

Stuart Quayle's piece on the Theory of Flight

Some problem sheets etc from the year 13 course

For links on thermometry go to spidercox resources and check the heat section

Additionally, try the National Physical Laboratory's resources

Moon crater simulation

Physics 2000 -  many applets for looking at 'modern' physics

 

 

 

 

Salters Horners

 

 

Higher, Faster, Stronger module AS

 

 

Experimental determination of g:  what is it ? - an intro; pendulum method; gravity lab (results from an experiment in which an object is dropped); acceleration and freefall - very detailed but excellent background info (you should be able to work out how to find g by freefall from this)

 

New Scientist article on how world records have been changing

 

Pole vaulting - use java applet that allows you to work out how high, in theory, you could vault. Excellent links from here too.

 

Speed skiing - the definitive site  - 0 to 154mph in 10 seconds! But some say it's not dangerous - an interview with a top skier. And the mechanics of it. Phew.

 

Dick Fosbury talks about his flop in a newspaper interview; High Jump physics with some background about how the centre of gravity bit works. For background, Britannica's page on the high jump. A set of stills from a video sequence for a high jumper (sehr gut - auf Deutsch!)

 

International Amateur Athletics Federation  Lots of photos of recent athletic achievements, and world rankings and another athletics site with all the world record data you might want

Sports records from just about everywhere

 

Olympic federation home page

 

Biomechanics link page to many of the world's top organisations - academic related

 

Sports Science link page including to Skateboard science and a Sport Science FAQ and a page compiled by the UK athletics team senior sports coach with extensive information for a training program.

 

The Tyrolean Traverse explained - by climbers and another more technical guide and a practical example - Old Man of Stoer

 

Newton - did that apple really fall ?

 

Animation to test your ideas about freefall and terminal velocity - excellent

 

Hooke's Law:

A sample practical method sheet (school) and one that's more advanced

Applications within orthapaedic biomechanics, including a very good graph and explanation (does get complicated).

An article on Hooke the scientist - apparently he was not a very handsome chap  and had many run-ins with Newton; exactly who stood on the shoulders of giants?

 

 

 

Bungee jumping links (find out what the very first bungee cords were made from, and where the first 'official' jump took place).  Physics of bungee jumping  - does include some maths beyond physics A/Level but worth looking at for what it says about materials.

 

Some training shoe ads and specifications:  skyflex          meridiansports             newbalance     find your perfect shoe          sneakers - all types (not much science)

 

Funfair Physics

 

Technology in Space module AS

 

Read this first: How Stuff Works - satellites - typical chatty and informative HSW site. Excellent to give you the background for the topic.

 

Sites recommended for info by the exam board:

 

Small satellites: 

 Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL)  - commercial designer and builder of both civil and military micro- and mini-satellites, and now nano-satellites (<10kg). Some excellent info here.

 

Small satellite homepage - maintained by Surrey University; contains data on power- systems for many satellites.

 

Oscar 11 Satellite (UoSAT-2) - a page from which to access loads of raw satellite data

Built in only 6 months, UoSAT-2 carries the first modern digital store and forward (S&F) communications payload and a prototype CCD camera. this page has been set up by amateur radio and satellite enthusiasts and has loads of files that UoSAT-2 transmits back to earth. Software is also available to decode it!

 

Other UK space projects:

Education Guide to Space (Leicester University) - good introduction

 

Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC), Space Science Department, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory

 

European Space Agency

ESA is the organisation responsible for European space projects

 

National Aeronautics and Space Administration - NASA

Homepage

NASA's education programme

Basics of spaceflight

NASA spacelink

International Space Station - you cannot get more current than this! Track the Space Station from here.  Graphic of the design of the ISS and an artist's impression of the complete station

 

Other useful sites the exam board did not find!

 

A history of spaceflight

How do astronauts go to the toilet ?

Were the moon landings a hoax ? Moon fakers

Voyager Space Mission - interplanetary mission, and beyond!

Meteosat images - fantastic  updated images from Nottingham University for weather forecasting, also a link to an  excellent sequence of the 1999 Eclipse 

Keep clicking on the map to get a satellite image of the area: MSN terraserver (includes a download of an image viewer) -  and the picture of Bristol is grey

More maps and satellite images

LANDSAT images

Satellite image of Katherine Lady Berkeley School, Wootton-under-Edge, Glos. - we can't seem to find a similar one for Downend

Some  declassified US images of weapons plants and conflicts including images like those from the Bosnian conflict that indicated mass graves and ethnic cleansing (too sad to comprehend).

Images of Chernobyl showing how habitation has changed since the explosion.

 

 

Digging up the Past  module AS

 

How metal detectors work

 

Short article on nuclear techniques in archaeology

 

An old Aztec weapon that used some great physics (allegedly)

 

Archaeological methods - excellent site with links for dating techniques, imaging, searching etc.

eg using CT scans to read cuneiform tablets (newspaper article)

UK Archaeological sites

British Archaeology magazine - this one has an article on an Iron Age Shetland toilet, a Viking falling down a rabbit hole, and a Bronze age warrior found buried with a spear in his hand; the gossipy side of archaeology. 

Jarlshof - a site in Shetland that has been continually inhabited since 3200BC - check out the skulls at the Sumburgh cist that were discovered near there (not much physics here but the place is amazing and gives me an excuse to go on about how wonderful Shetland is...)

Archaeosurvey site for nondestructive techniques - click on geoelectric for a real life resistivity survey.

 

Online text book, courtesy of Kevin Greene  including chapter on Dating Techniques (technical but thorough - loads of stuff on thermoluminescence amongst other things)

 

 

 

Good Enough to Eat  module AS

 

The Cadbury website - this has loads of information about chocolate and the specific products the company makes - try to concentrate on the science of the production of it! (History of chocolate, then the  production link)

 

Nestle (if your conscience permits)

 

Useful food resource index - University of Oregon

 

Basic background to viscosity; and a glossary. And another more detailed background article with some maths

 

Bostock consistometer - details - and another example 

 

Redwood viscometer  and the Saybolt second

 

Cambridge Applied Systems Viscometer

 

Instrumentation for food testing - Oregon State University

 

A set of lab investigations on food properties - Purdue University

 

Article on electrorheology and chocolate

 

Useful notes on material properties, with definitions and explanations of behaviour

 

Background to Mohs' scale - geological - and a few standards on it

 

Brinell's hardness test  and background on hardness; article that describes many hardness scales and has a useful comparison table

 

Optical properties of solutions - introduction - chirality means 'handedness'

Another introduction with a more practical bias (A/Level standard from schoolscom)

 

Historical article on the Pulfrich refractometer

 

UK government site for food standards  - this has all the government legislation and requirements for food hygiene; search the archive  under packaging and you'll  find even the teabag gets tested and that hydrocarbons can be found in chocolate

 

Food irradiation - facts from IAEA (International Atomic Energy Authority) - check in particular the link on packaging, and some work based on a SATIS 16-18 exercise from Independent Learning network Website.

 

 

 

 Probing the Heart of Matter module A2

 

Theories and ideas about the creation of the universe (based on Hawking's universe tv series)

 

Strange stuff explained - useful if you want to know what quarks and antimatter are

 

Ned Wright's Tutorial on Cosmology and astrophysics - top of A2/undergraduate standard

 

Interactive timeline for the history of the universe (pbs).  

 

Text timeline from a different source (St Vincent)

 

Link for tutorials on antimatter and classifications of particles and interactions

 

Extensive  page of links for particle physics

 

Excellent slideshow and presentation on particle physics from the Royal Holloway College

 

The particle adventure - interactive tour of the basics of particle physics - needs shockwave.

 

 

 

General Salters stuff

 

You can download the syllabus from Edexcel - as a pdf file

 

Salters Horners Homepage

 

Useful addresses for the course

 

What is  'the worshipful company of Horners'  and who are 'Salters' ?

 

Updates for the course 

   

Links for Biology A/Level

 

Science teaching links
Work done by our students
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