Bragg on Bragg

Lord Bragg of Wigton, a former pupil of the school, has a great interest in Physics and has done a lot to promote Physics through his Radio 4 programmes. I've posted about his book "On Giants' Shoulders" before. You can borrow it from Wigton library.

This week, Melvyn Bragg's In Our Times programme has been about Crystallography. This is basically when you fire X-rays at the atoms in a crystal. The gaps between the atoms act like slits so the the X-rays spread and interfere with each other as they pass. The complicated pattern that you get can be interpreted to give the structure.

Here's the link to the programme. I think it's valid for a year.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01p0s9s

Two of the key founders of this area of study were William Henry Bragg and his son Lawrence Bragg. William was born at Westward, very close to Wigton. They both won the Nobel Prize for Physics, the only parent/child duo to have done so.

Time

Castlerigg Stone Circle near Keswick must be one of the earliest scientific sites, if you think about it. Scientists make careful observations and record them. These ancient people made careful observations about the movement of the Sun through the seasons and recorded it. It will be impressive if modern scientific findings are as durable. The study of time is one of the most important areas in Physics. What exactly is time? One of my teachers said that it was the thing that meant that two objects could occupy the same space. (Think about it!) Isaac Newton thought that time was independent of space - as if there was a big clock sat outside the Universe so that there is the same time everywhere. Einstein showed that isn't true. First, light has a fixed speed, so that when I look at the Sun, it is like it was 8 minutes ago because that's how long it takes the light to get here. What does that do to the concept of NOW? Secondly, Einstein showed that time can be stretched if you travel fast. A second takes longer if you are travelling faster. To understand this, read Einstein for Beginners. It's in the school library. See my other blog for details: http://www.idareyoutoborrow.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/einstein-for-beginners.html

Brilliant science podcasts

One of my fellow science teachers found this brilliant set of explanations of scientific ideas:

http://www.nakedscientists.com/

"Naked" as in stripped down to the bare essential ideas, rather than, well, you know what.  Try telling that to the school's locked down Google!