From the Integrating Mathematical Problem Solving project by Mathematics for Education and Industry (MEI), this activity for post-16 students demonstrates that coffee cools gradually because it is hotter than room temperature and heat is lost to the room. Mixing the coffee with milk also cools it but this effect is...

In this series of activities, students work in teams, learn about engineering by taking on different roles and learn how physics applies in the context of planning a music...

This resource from Siemens encourages students to think about medical diagnosis and how information can assist the doctor in being effective and accurate. Students are asked to suggest ideas about the characteristics of a useful image to support a medical diagnosis. They then look at the properties of sound, how...

The aim of this experiment is for students to be able to determine for themselves the threshold voltage needed to activate a range of LEDs of different colours. From these values, combined with a knowledge of the wavelengths of each LED, students can plot a graph to determine a value for Planck’s constant. The...

The Science upd8 activity set in the context of the universe. Earlier missions failed to find life on other planets. Is it still worth looking? Can we justify the expense of the search for extra terrestrial intelligence? Students will be deciding just how likely intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy is.

On December 15th 2015 European Space Agency astronaut Tim Peake launched on the six month Principia mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Principia was named after Isaac Newton’s Naturalis Principia Mathematica, describing the principal laws of motion and gravity.

The education and inspiration of...

This resource, produced by the Institute of Physics (IOP) and the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine (IPEM), contains a short introduction to medical imaging and how seeing inside your body can help diagnosis. A presentation is accompanied by teachers' notes.

The presentation describes:

This resource will let students see pink elephants.

When the human eye is exposed to one colour for a relatively long period of time, the cone cells will become saturated with that colour. Once the eye is exposed to a broad range of colours again, the brain will pick up weaker signals from that colour and...

This activity allows students to investigate how images are produced from data streams by using first a spreadsheet and then an image-processing program. They then go on to see how the usefulness of such a monochromatic image may be enhanced by using lookup tables and calibration. The materials used focus on the...

This activity, from the Gatsby Science Enhancement Programme, helps students to develop their skills in assessing information. Students consider what they need to look for in an information source to be sure that it is reliable. Students consider the peer review process of a professional journal and compare this...

This activity, from the Gatsby Science Enhancement Programme, helps students to examine the claims to truthfulness of statements of different kinds. The aim is to become more critical of the use of language and to develop a constructive scepticism when assessing primary and secondary information. Students are given...

This activity, produced by Gatsby Science Enhancement Programme, helps students to refine their skills in summarising information in a presentation in a way that makes sense to them. In doing so, students are more able to assimilate the key points. The aim is to embed good practice that students can use every time...