The Matter with Antimatter
Big thanks to Alom Shaha, the Physics teacher behind www.labreporter.com, for posting this video about antimatter. A nice explanation and some visuals from the Tony Hart school of animation make it well worth a watch. Imagine what would happen if Morph collided with Antimorph…
Why not go and have a look at the site for more clips on the big Bang and the beginning of it all.
A new year, a new beginning (of all life on Earth)
Two short clips of Miller-Urey’s experiments demonstrating the formation of amino acids from water, ammonia and hydrogen (with a little help from lightning). The evidence produced by this experiment supported the hypothesis of chemical evolution – the formation of organic compounds from inorganic molecules.
Thanks to Hilary Rimbi from the IB’s OCC for posting this link. 
A quick Google search turned up this short clip of Stanley Miller describing the experimental set-up.
If you click here, you can also try a simulation of the experiment (can be saved with Flashcatcher). This little Flash was produced by the University of California at San Diego’s TV channel. I haven’t had time to search through their site, but there may be more useful nuggets of Science gold there.
It’s the Holidays
No posts for a while – taking the family back to the UK for baby’s first Christmas.
Here are the Eepybirders celebrating Christmas – Diet Coke and Mentos style.
Enjoy, have a good holiday and see you in the New Year.
Steve.
Skinner’s Rats – rats with wings.
Here are a couple of clips from YouTube about Skinner’s experiments on operant conditioning.
A shorter clip of the pigeon turning in a circle to gain food is after the jump.
Pavlov’s Dog – The Office style
One of Jim’s pranks on Dwight:
After the jump there’s a clip from an Eddie Izzard about Pavlov’s cats:
“You might as well face it – it’s resistant to base”
Very funny parody of Addicted to Love. Thanks to madcat for posting it to the TES Boards. It’s produced by scottkj on YouTube.
Full lyrics after the jump:
Saving Videos – post updated
Some more techniques added: https://sciencevideos.wordpress.com/2007/09/19/saving-videos/
Recombinant DNA Technology
Here are some animations about rDNA technology. More direct links below the video.
University of Delaware (thanks to biology_sparkly at the TES Boards) Basic animation but lots of relevant info. Can be saved.
rDNA and plasmid and phage vectors from the Royal Veterinary College (more animations on the left of their page)
The New Scientists playing with food
Two experiments from the New Scientist book ‘How to Fossilise Your Hamster‘.
In the first, we find out how to extract iron from breakfast cereal (perhaps we could use it to make a hammer to deal with the presenter):
In the second, we see how to extract casein (as an example of a polymer) from milk, using just vinegar and a stove. They keep saying ‘plastic’ here, but I’m pretty sure it’s not a plastic. Plastics are polymers, but casein is a protein (though still a polymer). Correct me if I’m wrong. Either way, it might be a good trick to introduce the proteins topics in DP Bio.
i-Biology 