Teaching physics conference

The Education Group of the Institute of Physics in Ireland will be holding its "Frontiers of Physics 2006" Physics Teachers' Annual Conference on Saturday 23rd September 2006 at the School of Physics, Dublin Institute of Technology.

It promises to be a fascinating event and will be attended by about 60 enthusiastic teachers from all over Ireland. Talks on the day will include:

The Baffling Mechanics of Simple Toys
Prof Tadashi Tokeida
University of Cambridge and African Institute for Mathematical Sciences

IOP Opportunities for Schools
Alison Hackett

Innovations in Physics Education - the DIT Perspective
DIT Physics Education Research Group

Hands on Physics
Science on Stage – SOS Team
Class Room Demonstrations – Dr Cathal Flynn, DIT
The Infinity Project – Mr Michael Tully, DIT
SLSS Software
Matlab – Electronics projects for the classroom

Exploration Station – What’s in store at Ireland’s proposed Interactive Science Centre?
Jane Jerry
Exploration Station

From Mega to Micro and way Beyond
Medical Physics and its Applications

The event is supported by the Teacher Education Section of the Department of Education and Science through the Second Level Support Service as part of continuing support for Leaving Certificate Physics, the Institute of Physics, Education Group and the Dublin Institute of Technology.

Careers in Physics: A day in the life of ...

The recently announced Irish Leaving Certificate examination results and college CAO entry requirements have cast a spotlight on the number of students studying science. And a spotlight has also been shone on their career opportunities in the long term...


A new resource published by the Institute of Physics in Ireland (IoP) will go a long way towards clarifying the wide variety of jobs that physics graduates can actually do. The IoP has recently produced a series of 18 flyers, each describing a day in the life of a person pursuing a career in physics, and they are available to download as PDFs from its website. I have to admit that I do have a personal interest in this project - one of the profiles is a day in the life of a video producer and features me!

BA Keeps Flying High (the other BA, that is)

One of the highlights of the 2005 Irish science year was the massive BA Festival of Science which was held in Trinity College Dublin and other venues around Dublin city. The BA (British Association for the Advancement of Science) is a charity which exists to advance the understanding, accessibility and accountability of the sciences and engineering, and this year's BA Festival of Science is visiting the city of Norwich and will take place from Sunday 2nd to Sunday 9th of September, 2006.

In the meantime, the 18 August 2006 issue of The BA Science News Digest has a handy round up of "hot topics" in the science world including: "the genes that make us human, Britain faces a scientist shortage and a new plan for picking planets. Plus, NASA’s missing moon tapes, a weird whale and how to bring frozen mammoths back from the dead."

Apparently those moon tapes really are missing: "The US space agency NASA has revealed that the original tapes of Neil Armstrong’s historic first steps on the moon have been mislaid somewhere in their vast archives. The Daily Telegraph reports that grainy television footage, recorded by pointing a TV camera at a black-and-white monitor, is currently the only visual record of the Apollo 11 moon landing."