Consensual sexual relationships between students and faculty have traditionally been viewed as private matters and have been ignored by university administrators except in cases that resulted in sexual harassment claims. Due to increasing sexual harassment litigation and the liabilities associated with such relationships, universities have…

The Teaching, Learning and Creativity (TLC) model suggests a wide variety of activities in three different phases. In the Teaching Phase, the teacher will discuss, demonstrate key experiments and provide data for pupils to interpret. In the Learning Phase, pupils will analyse text, do a simple test and write an essay. In the Creativity Phase,…

Harnessing energy from the tides is a much-promoted but rarely realised way of generating electricity. This article examines some of the systems that are currently in use or under development, and outlines their economic, environmental and technical implications.

The classic experiment to measure the drag coefficient involves dropping coffee filters. Wouldn't it be more fun to try something different? In fact, an experiment on the drag force is conducted nearly 4000 times a day during the baseball season and you have free access to this PITCHf/x data!

This article describes a game designed to help Spanish high school students (grade 10, age 15-16) understand the periodic table. It combines some features of bingo and a puzzle in the same pedagogical game, making it an engaging approach for learning about this important teaching tool. Students are given a verbal clue -- the name of a chemical…

Science relies on standards for measurement. This article describes assessment of geometric shape, rather than size. The author considers the problem of establishing departure from roundness. In doing this he examines some curious geometric shapes, including non-circular shapes of constant width and shapes that rotate smoothly inside triangles.…

People use many different products made from plastics every day. But conventional plastics such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC) do not always have a good reputation in society at large. Bioplastics such as thermoplastic starch (TPS) promise to be better alternatives but are they really better than conventional plastics? This article presents a new…

Acommon undergraduate laboratory experience is the determination of the elastic constant of a spring, whether studying the elongation under a static load or studying the damped harmonic motion of the spring with a suspended mass. An alternative approach to this laboratory experience has been suggested by Menezes et al., aimed at studying the…

A three-year project aimed at embedding seismology into schools in northern England to support the teaching of the earth science strands in the National Curriculum for England and Wales is described. Seismometers were deployed in a range of high schools across the Yorkshire and Humberside region. Deployment was supported by a programme of staff…

This article describes a field course in Cornwall looking at mineral processing with the focus on the chemistry involved. The course was split into two parts. The first looked at tin mining based around Penzance. This involved visiting mines, hunting for mineral samples, carrying out a stream survey and visiting the Camborne School of Mines…

This paper is an addition to the series of papers on the exponential function begun by Albert Bartlett. In particular, we ask how the graph of the exponential function y = e[superscript -t/t] would appear if y were plotted versus ln t rather than the normal practice of plotting ln y versus t. In answering this question, we find a new way to…

This "Science note" arose out of practical work involving the dilution of ethanoic acid, the measurement of the pH of the diluted solutions and calculation of the acid dissociation constant, K[subscript a], for each diluted solution. The students expected the calculated values of K[subscript a] to be constant but they found that the…

This quantitative research study reports the effectiveness of demonstrations supported by appropriate information and communication technology (ICT) tools such as dataloggers, animations and video clips on upper secondary school students' attitudes towards the learning of physics. A sample of 94 secondary four express stream (age 16 years)…

If a programme were to be devised for the early-career development of science teachers, what might such a programme look like? This was the focus of a meeting of science educators interested in developing such a structure, from the start of initial teacher training onwards. The contributions, modified and written up here, include a suggested…

In 2000, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study was conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). It is a worldwide study of 15-year-old students' performance in mathematics, science and reading skills. The study showed relatively poor results for German students' scientific…