Author Archives: Stephen
MOLO: The Molecular Logic Project
The Molecular Logic Project aims “to improve the ability of all students to understand fundamental biological phenomena in terms of the interactions of atoms and molecules”. They achieve this with an extensive database of online java-based simluations and models for students to use. The animations are simple, and there are a lot of activities to choose from. To make it work, you’ll need to install their software.
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Some highlights for IB Bio:
How do mutations affect protein folding?
How does gene mutation affect protein folding?
And loads more here: Biology, Molecular Biology (Chem of life), Physics/Chemistry.
Why is Science Important?
The most important question any science teacher should ask themself – because if we don’t have a good answer, what are we doing in the classroom? I heard about this after listening to the Guardian’s Science Weekly podcast. Alom Shaha, a science teacher and film-maker, went into the pod to promote and discuss his project: “Why is Science Important?”
The result of his efforts is a website full of great answers to the question, along with a 30-minute film.
Watch the full film here:
Why is Science Important? from Alom Shaha on Vimeo.
Or if your connection can’t hack it, it’s broken into chunks here:
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So… Why is Science important?
Scientific American Frontiers
Thanks to bogstandardcomp from the TES Forums for this one.
Click Here
PBS have a series on their archives called Scientific American Frontiers. Although the last episode posted there was a couple of years ago, they have full episodes online and allow easy navigation within clips. There are also teaching resources and notes to go along with each one.
For some highlights have a look at:
– Make Up Your Mind (brain development and neuroscience)
– Hot Planet, Cold Comfort (climate change)
– Going Deep (ALVIN and deep-sea exploration)
– The Gene Hunters (Genetics and a few good resources)
Amgen: Hi-tech Cancer Video Resources
This resource was first posted on Wired.com and looks great – if you have the bandwidth to load and play it. Amgen is a for-profit US-based biotechnology company that are working on pharmaceuticals to combat cancer and other illnesses. With this resource, including 15 videos, they show how they are working to combat tumour angiogenesis – the critical stage in cancer development which often leads to complications and mortality.
As the tumour grows, it requires a blood supply and angiogenesis provides this – by growing new blood vessels. The risk now is metastasis – some of the tumour could pass into the new blood vessels and be carried around the body, where they might reinvade and grow in a new location. Metastasis accounts for the majority of deaths related to cancer.
To enter their flashy angiogenesis website, click here.
Or for a sneaky peaky:
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There are also some good angiogenesis animations on YouTube, which might load more easily:
A longer explanation from Envita healthcare:
And for loads of great information, the National Cancer Institute has a series of slides with information, and a powerpoint presentation free to download.
Tonga Boom! Undersea volcano erupts off Tonga
Imagine being on a fishing boat making a holiday video and then the whole ocean explodes around you. Well that’s not exactly what happened, but it would be a good story…
According to the Global Volcanism Program, this volcano started to erupt on the 16th or 17th March and has been going since. This video shows a team of scientists who took their boat out to the site to capture footage and record local and wide-spread changes. Apparently, no-one has been hurt by the volcano.
To see some aerial photos of the volcano, with coordinates, visit the ASTER volcano archive.
Click on the image below for some great photos from the Guardian.
A spectacular cloud of ash and steam
As you can see, the plume of ash and steam is huge. A line from the AP states “the eruption does not pose any danger to islanders at this stage, and there have been no reports of fish or other animals being affected” – other than by the great big explosion, then.
To learn more about volcanoes in general, visit the Science Education Resource Centre’s Volcano visualisation library. For more about how underwater volcanoes are monitored, check out this flash animation from NeMO Net, from NOAA.
For another good article on vocanoes, click on the image below to see what Wired.com has to say…
Mt Cleveland erupting, as seen from space
NOAA Environmental Visualisation Library
Education Resources, Animations, Videos and Satellite Images
Awesome. NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration) has revamped its Environmental visualisation libray – bringing new educational materials, visualisations, animations and resources to educators and the public. See the images of the 2008 hurricane season, animations of the ocean damage caused by humans or check out their library of satellite images.
They also have a YouTube channel where you can view and download some of their video resources. In relation to our upcoming Earth Day theme of “Reefs and Oceans“, here’s a clip about the effects of coral bleaching:
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Check out the NOAA image galleries too...
How to regrow a rainforest – Willie Smits on TED Talks
Willie and the orangs
My Grade 12 class have looked at this story before, and now we can hear about it from Willie Smitts, a primatologist and conservationist who has led a huge project to replant and revive a section on rainforest in Borneo. They have taken over 8,000 hectares of scorched and cleared land and are returning it to a habitat worthy of orang-utans and many more endangered species.
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Smits was featured in TED2009 and here he is with his story of how they regrew the rainforest.
Science and Islam – BBC4 Series
I heard about this series on BBC 4 when listening to the Guardian Science Weekly podcast recently. They had the presenter and physicist, Jim Al-Khalili, on the show talking about some of the great discoveries and advances made in the Islamic world between the 8th and 14th Centuries.
Think about it this way – if it has an ‘al’ at the beginning, there’s a fair bet that it was discovered, invented or pushed forward in the Islamic world: algebra, algorithms, alkali, alcohol…
Alhazen (Ibn al-Haythem) is considered one of the founders of the scientific method which we still use today – a good scientist formulates a hypothesis and devises a method to prove it wrong. In this way, we know if a scientific idea stands up to testing. If not, we need to revise the hypothesis and test again.
You can see the official BBC page for the programme here, but the video may no longer be available to download. Alternatively, pick up the episodes (broken into parts), from YouTube:
1: The Language of Science
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
2: The Empire of Reason
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
3: The Power of Doubt
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
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To find out more about Science and the Islamic world, try some of these resources:
1001 Inventions: a great resource for Science and Tech discoveries
Go there!
i-Biology 