Please not that some of these exemplars refer to the revised Higher, others to the CfE version. Please bear this in mind, particularly with regard to the “scientific communication” and the assignment.
Vehicle technology and Renewables are up to date.
If you would like to download some updated versions (many thanks to Stuart Farmer of Robert Gordon’s College), click here.
Stuart has also included a colleague’s exemplar on Planetary Impacts.
If you choose to do earhquakes, there are some possible experiments here. These are not intended as “recipes” for students to follow, more for teacher use in deciding how to support student practicals.
Tracker – easy motion analysis and more
Tracker is a wonderful free package for analysing motion, photos of spectra and interference patterns and much more.
Click on the links on the left below to download documents, and on the right to download sample videos and images.
Running Tracker in a browser (beta) – Our first experiences of running Tracker without having to install it. It worked on our Windows PC and Chromebook
You can do Doppler demonstrations in the in the classroom by whirling a commercial “Doppler Ball” or your own home made “buzzer on a string” device around your head. Here we look at experiments that demonstrate quantitatively the frequency shift. The second, which uses a free frequency spectrum analyser, shows the shift in real time and opens up the possibility of investigations into the relationship between frequency and velocity.
The following document is aimed mainly at Advanced Higher, but there’s an activity where the detection of exoplanets using the Doppler effect is modelled:
Plotting Wein’s Law curves showing the wavelength distribution versus temperature from a filament lamp is all but impossible using standard school equipment. However, you can easily show that the percentage of infrared radiation from a filament lamp decreases as the filament becomes hotter.
This activity was originally designed for a CfE Level 4 E&O. It is relevant to Higher. Road Safety Scotland can lend you the specialist kit (you provide the trolley etc). Contact SSERC and we’ll put you in touch with them.
This guide should be helpful when pupils undertake Researching Physics tasks, or for general data analysis of experiments. In clear language it discusses the differences between precision and accuracy, reliability, graph drawing and interpretation and so on.
This is a list of the kit you might use for the various Researching Physics Exemplars. Note that the Renewables and Vehicle Technology ones are still at the “draft” stage, though they have been demonstrated at recent SSERC and IoP workshops.
Only the “specialised” equipment is listed – it is assumed that you have access to metre sticks, multimeters and leads, for example.
It is our intention to make the document a working one, and to that end, your feedback and suggestions are highly valued. Contact gregor.steele@sserc.org.uk
We know that many schools are now using what we might call “core” experiments for their assignments. We are producing guidance on these investigations. The guidance is designed for staff, not students. We don’t suggest you give it to them unedited as there could be too much information regarding variable range etc. Our aim is to describe set ups that work and give good results.
This is an evolving document. So far we have covered:
We use cookies and similar methods to recognize visitors and remember their preferences. To learn more about these methods, including how to disable them, view our Privacy Policy.