A good 'angle' can really deepen understanding of any topic. A good context, can really unpack learning issues uncovered in class quizzes. From a starting point of my class's general interest in dangerous gases, and there are general issues applying chemical equations.
Glenbrook is a village in a hidden valley 200m above Penrith and is absolutely full of history, even ghosts! Mrs Cook told me in 1997 about the day in WW2 the Army told every one to stay in doors due to a Mustard Gas accident.
Glenbrook's first train route was changed after a terrible accident with a run away train. The museum at Valley Heights tells the story of casualties started up the Emu Plains Cemetery you first pass on the train. The old train tunnel was so long (> 1 km) and small, the drivers would run out of air.
My personal experience of Gas Warfare was being briefed for the Gas Hut in Pukapunyal. By 1983 the Army dropped the requirement just in time.
Frankly, I was shocked in 2009 to read that the British were the main driving force behind gas warfare in a plan to take Sevastopol in the Crimean war. Stories of prevailing winds being from German lines to Allied in WW1 just built a picture of a really insane practice. In 2011 I found out during a visit to the Australian War Memorial that Australian Gas masks were full of asbestos.
I will return to this blog to write comments on a few of the accidents at Glenbrook, the Dumping of munitions at sea and later by Union Carbide that has rendered all of Sydney Harbor behind the Bridge unfit for fishing, and the thinking behind Gas and Nuclear Warfare.
Twenty eight Western Sydney students (names changed for this article) are on a mission to find a better planet. They have been selected not because they are experts, but have been profiled as "Can do problem solvers".
"The Japanese Tsunami chucked an entire country, mountain ranges and all, 2 meters to the right. This planet is definitely alive" said Jane Mitchells leader of the "Planet Mechanics Team". "We were expecting to hear the usual "The earth is a lump of solid rock", but were shocked to hear "The earth a lump of solid play-dough wrapped around a liquid center with a giant ball bearing in the center"
"At first it is was hard to think of solid rock as 'Plastic' but heat and tremendous pressure can get rock to squeeze about the mantle like tooth paste. It is only in the top 300 km, the so called weak layer rocks, that things stick and shatter creating earthquakes." commented Brodie who spends his weekends canyoning and caving. "The Blue Mountains, a hour out of Sydney is the world's second biggest Canyon system is my back yard."
"Abseiling then lie-lowing down the canyons is action packed. But in winter its colder, there is less light hours and you look out for dry canyons like Tiger Snake just up from my friends house. It was here we got stuck behind so Sydney Uni Geologists back from Antarctica. Here is the quick story of Sydney:
1: 250 Million years ago, Lithgow was higher than Mt Everest but was near the South Pole.
2: Rain fall was x10 today, and a slow river ten times todays Amazon laid down 1 km thickness of river bed on top a a sizable seam of forest (now coal)
3. Australia drifts to the equator over a mantel uplift, creating the oldest volcanoes in Qld, working its way down to Victoria now creating the continental North- South Great Dividing Range. Including the Blue Mountains."
Many students travel down from the Mountains each day through Glenbrook Gorge.
They travel right through a mountain peak that has lift gently in last few million years, with the original creek still in place. A result of the Mantel hotspot.
1. Enabling space for innovation can allow imitation. Positive thinking is Contagious Since the posting of this You Tube many wedding ceremonies have continued to build on this theme.
2. Enable students to develop projects, follow this link
In this Youtube a DC radial ion current, in an axial magnetic field creates a rotating fluid current of vortex.
From motors and generators HSC
or F = i l B Sin(Theta). Here the X or cross product is a more advanced way of saying the force is a right angles to both the current and the field (Right hand slap rule)
Now looking at this situation, the deeper your beaker, the more spread out your current or the same current pushes a larger mass of water. So a shallower beaker will have a more dramatic effect.
A smaller central electrode will mean a higher central current.
A laminated core will just increase the magnetic field through the device.
You can use an AC current if the magnetic field also alternates and is suppled by a solenoid. This is a form of a "Universal Motor". With AC there is no bubbles produced.
An electric field in an liquid with ions will produce gas. The aNode is negative having excess electrons meaning H+H+ converts to H2 which leaves with the extra electrons.
Ecosystems (the mechanisms working to make our home) need to be maintained.
You need to understand the big ideas:
1) Energy comes from the sun, and everything needs energy
2) Big fish eating little fish, extends to a food chain.
3) Things eating more than one food source are more flexible and the entire ecosystem and adapt.
4) introduced species (cane toads) can be a real pest.
5) we can monitor our environment by Bioindicators to stop disasters, and protect ourselves.
Today I visited ANSTO at Lucas Heights. ANSTO gives Australia Nuclear knowhow for good. It may be to protect us from polluters, cure cancers, or basically put smarts into how we run Australia. Henk is an ANSTO scientist who is giving back to Australia by working with teachers and students at Penrith High. He read our Science Blog about Bees and their ecosystem and explained how ANSTO used local bee hives as ultra sensitive industrial waste scouts.
Imagine a map of an area covering a 2 km radius and the bee hive in the center. Imagine areas with particular flowering plants highlighted, and then imagine this animated to cover different areas as the year progresses and different plants come into flower. Henk's team collect the pollen that drops as little balls as the bees land at the hive. Analyse the pollen for pollution and you have a great detector, and free honey.
There is only one problem, pollution to flower to bee means that you get only the tiniest samples, and you want to nail the tiniest traces. You want super early warning. Classic chemistry will loose these traces, you want to find atoms that jump up and down and wave at you... atoms that tell you they are there.
Here you can see the radiation rays shot out of ordinary rocks. A pollen clump will have much less than this, but by watching the radiation it is as if the pollen can mobile phone the information, some information gives the type of pollution, some the source, and some the date. ANSTO plays "Cludo" with the periodic table, to keep your food and water safe, put polluters behind bars, and remove some of the guess work from saving the planet.
You can look at the population of bees as an indicator, move to looking at how they act as a bioindicator, or go even one step further get them working for you as field researchers.
You can look at Ecosystems through big ideas, or follow the lives of a particular species like bees. Both ways bring together structure and content for a deep insight into the Science of Life's home.
But first some key terms..........
Eco - Home
Systems - Mechanics behind how something works, components and how they work together. Systems have inputs outputs and controls. - Novels, Stories, and Sports have systems that are communicated so we can understand how characters and players interact and we watch how the system evolve. We can empathize with characters and players, placing ourselves in their shoes. Their actions will determine their relationships in the system and the health of they system. It is my opinion that the current generation appear to be less committed but are in fact deal makers with a keen sense of systems.
The world of Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice was set in the social system of 1800's England.
"It is a truth universally acknowledged that any man ...."
ology - love or study of
Ec + ology - study of (our or an living organism's) home
Eco + systems - mechanics working behind the scenes to create an animals home
Population - the number of a species (type of animal or plant) living in an Environment
Bioindicator - Something you see in the environment that tells you how it is going. Animal behavior can be incredibly sensitive.
Things to get you thinking. Watch this ecosystem we build for bees. See how the keepers put in a metal "Queen excluder" that imprisons her in the third story of the hive, but allows worker to feed her and tend the young. This keeps the hive put, and means that lower floors have no eggs and larvae and honey only for clean harvesting.
b) the next logical choice is to change our life style to a low use, low waste slower pace life
c) nuclear power is beneficial, as part of a power solution for high population densities.
In many circumstances, it is best to decide to act early so we are in good shape to manage everything. In monetary terms, spending a basic amount on dental checks or maintaining a car, is a sound investment. The underlying reality is a good diet or sensible driving really impacts the general situation you find yourself in. I don't drink or smoke, so the closest parallel in my personal life it the amount of milk I drink that I know will lead to a heart condition.
I have a profound sense that people profiting from supporting unsustainable living, have made parallel decisions in the real and moral world detaching themselves from the consequences. I don't discuss the model ... its up for discussion, but there must be something that explains why my opinion and that of many others are ignored.
In my life situation, the closest to the current situation of a shared future, and people living unsustainably is group houses during Uni. I am keenly aware, we are facing a different situation: we are in this group home forever.
As I see it we are going to have to talk our flatmates around, we can't pick up the phone and dial Dominoes for Planet Earth. Aussieecospheres makes this point. Youtube
School Science that I teach is great, but at the end of the day it is not set up by practicing scientists. In my heart it feels a little two dimensional, and you have to spend so energy in diplomacy. The School Science point made at this point is that the name for a home, or place of life is "Eco". "ology" means the study of, or more closely " a love of" and as a consequence a body of knowledge. The group student home, could be an "Eco" but the term to capture the idea is "Ecosystem". The passionate point I am making is that what matters is both at a global scale and in the group home is the social inputs that feed into the behaviours or "Sociology".
My interest, is trying to research strategies, to reprogram the sociology, that will reset the "Ecosystem". Can I bring my knowledge to bare on this situation? Origin energy has this interesting social reprogramming strategy:
Quite rightly, the school approach is to build the foundation ideas upward. To build, scaffold the ideas and concepts that are then filled in. However, in this case, it is the surrounding logic, that lock us into a very sequential approach. In a nutshell there is a view that there is a correct or best way of approaching a problem. It is here, I would like to share my experience from years of studying Quantum Physics has tapped me over into thinking in parallel. I discovered the smallest molecule, by fusing passion and curiosity to take me in areas I was ignorant. I had remember leaving the old way of thinking (very much black board chalk drawings, and pin ball machines) and moving onto waves, beautiful curves travelling through each other slowly becoming the new reality. As knowledge brought colour and depth to the night sky, quantum mechanics gave me a heighten sense of bulk (heisenburgs uncertainty principle) and feel for materials.
Important points, EM waves get detached from antenna and the spark is just a switch. This effect can be scaled down to atoms for light emmission. The sparks were also the first detection of the photoelectric effect.
