TV and Radio Guide w/c 10 June 2013

Another busy weekend infused with sunshine meant that both Sarah and I felt disinclined to spend precious time glued to our respective laptops to collate the TV Guide. However Sarah has done one half and I’ve done the other, so through willpower and teamwork we have another helping of Science based TV and Radio to share with you…

Sarah’s picks of the week are The Life Scientific with Ewan Birney on Junk DNA and the programme on measurement and precision. Mine have to be the repeat of The Seven Ages of Starlight (excellent) and the Science of DIY explaining how screwdrivers are levers.

Here are three recent videos by Henry Reich. His work is an excellent example of using video to clearly explain scientific concepts. Perfect for a foray into the flipped lesson.

• His first on his Minute Earth channel, compares biological biodiversity and competition with the economic challenges of microbreweries. It’s a nice analogy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Atg-5Nqszxw
  The next two are both found on his Minute Physics channel:
• Turning sound into light: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yHDeKFW8j8
• Can human’s humans really feel temperature?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXT012us9ng

TV and Radio Guide w/c 4th March 2013

A quick post this week – Sarah has collated the guide this week and her pick of the week is Material World discussing ‘junk’ DNA. One of her friends works in this field studying non-coding DNA, so it holds particular interest for her. Sarah is also going to ask her A level biologists to listen to it for homework. How many of you use the guide in this way, to set further learning opportunities for your students? Let us know in the comments if you have any specific ideas or examples.

I noticed this week that Bang Goes the Theory is back on for a new series. This programme always has interesting items and this series Tomorrow’s World presenter Maggie Philbin is joining the team. During the first episode Jem Stansfield is going to try to make plastic from potatoes – good for GSCE C1: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p015sc06, I’ll be watching with interest.

I love these videos from Veritasium. Derek often starts his videos by finding out what people know about the particular subject and this video is no different: people in Sydney are astounded by the results of Young’s Double Slit experiment. What is Light?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iuv6hY6zsd0. I’ll be passing this on to my A Level Physicists. (A point of interest, the 2 people with Derek in the vault under the Royal Society are Brady Haran, who makes the PeriodicVideos and Henry Reich who makes the MinutePhysics videos. They all met up in London last summer so there is a lot of crossover in their videos at the moment).