Are ALL Viruses Bad?

Thursday, March 26th, 2020 | STEPHEN BRONI | No Comments

graphic of sausage-shaped bacteria with pin-like viruses attachedWith all that is going on  around us,  all across this beautiful planet of ours and the word `virus’ dominating everything we see, hear, read in the media at the moment I found myself thinking “Are all viruses bad? Are there any useful, beneficial viruses? And  why  ARE bats  such good carriers  off so many nasty diseases – over 60 of them!”

It seems highly likely that viruses do play a substantial part in maintaining a healthy body.  You have probably heard of our `microbiome’ but what about our ‘virome’
Read more here:
How ‘good’ viruses may influence health 
Here:
Not All Viruses Are Bad For You. Here Are Some That Can Have a Protective Effect
And here:
Viruses Don’t Deserve Their Bad Rap: They’re The Unsung Heroes You Never See
[In  the embedded Ted-X talk in this link, the always engaging, Peter Pollard also  illustrates some illuminating facts about how much C02 freshwater ecosystems pump into the atmosphere, due in part to viruses… everything is linked! ]

And on the question of why bats are such good carriers of disease.Brown bat in flight
Check out:
Why Do Bats Transmit So Many Diseases?

BEFORE YOU CLICK-  Spend a minute thinking about what you know of bat behaviour and basic physiology …. (The answer may take flight in your head…(hint))

 

However, when all is said and done our thoughts are all on one virus at the moment.

Ever wondered how the tests for Coronavirus work?
May you never have to take one!

P.S.
Need a refresher on just exactly what viruses are and how they work?
Check out this great Khan Academy Tutorial on Viruses and the  text Q&A that follows.

Stay safe
Be patient

Science Academy 2019 Student Podcasts

Wednesday, October 2nd, 2019 | STEPHEN BRONI | No Comments

Exploring  effective techniques for communicating science to a public audience is a key component of Science Academy (OUASSA). Every year our students undertake a project under one of four science communication streams:- Interpretive Science Talks, Science Film Making with your cell phone or Ipad, Museum Science Communication, Science Radio Podcasting.

This year Shannon Colbert and Domi Angelo-Laloli from Community Access Radio’s OAR  105.4FM Dunedin mentored eight of our students  through the process of constructing a short science podcast by means of interactive workshops in the studio and on-line  support throughout the year.

Below is a list  of the topics they covered

Physicists on the Pitch
by Abdul Ahmadi from Mangere College

Discover the science behind Soccer! From Newton’s Laws of Physics, to the Magnus Effect and the use of `Cleats’.

Operation: Space-cial Exploration
by Jessica Marshall from Opihi College

Billions of stars, hundreds of planets, a black hole or two, but how do we know this? What feats of engineering were needed to bring us this knowledge and what will be needed to further understand the world around us?

The Periodic Podcast
by Niamh Frizzell from Awaptapu College

This podcast is about history of the periodic table, the `International Year of the Periodic Table’ and the celebrations that surround it.

Error 1387 Gene Unavoidable
by Seruwaia Matairavula from Wesley College

In this podcast I discuss Genetics at Otago University and how the study can benefit humanity. I am accompanied by Sean, a Masters student studying genetics, and Science Academy attendee, Cameron Bergin from John Paul II High School in Greymouth.

The Extra-terrestrial Podcast
by Corban Taylor from Opotiki College

If you want to listen in to a good friend and I talk about aliens and all that jazz then listen in, as we discuss our views on alien beliefs.

Are We Living in a Simulation?
by Maddison Ridder from Verdon College & Cameron Bergin from John Paul II High

Have you ever felt like you have no control, like your whole life is set out for you? Have you ever thought that maybe you’re living in a simulation? Well, it’s more possible than you’d think. This podcast is going to investigate the reasons why we could be part of a simulation.

Lost in Translation
by Gemma Marnane from Central Southland College

If you are willing to deny convention, it becomes more worthy of attention. For all the knowledge, all the fear, we forget to speak of the meaning, which is hidden. Take this, imagine a world in words. It forms languages and societies, stipulates mutations, natural selection and forms gene pools and populations. It’s the world. We are all just a little lost in translation.

Becoming a Midwife
by Tamel Robertson from Aurora College

My podcast is based on the life of a midwife and the duties in her role. I will be interviewing midwife Margaret Gardner to gather information for the listener as well as myself as I plan on beginning my study to become a midwife next year, in 2020.

Have a listen here at   https://oar.org.nz/event/science-academy-chat/

Happy Listening!

Video killed the radio star??

Thursday, April 7th, 2016 | EMILY HALL | No Comments

flatscreenThe other day, looking for a quick video on the Science of Sport to show a Physics class as a little starter, I went to the Veritasium website to look for some inspiration. I found these two videos which I think have been posted before but are definitely worth a re visit for Science Teachers.

This is going to REVOLUTIONIZE education! 

Effectiveness of Science Videos 

Just as an aside, I ended up going with this video: Bungy Jumping What I did was show the video to the students as a starter. They watched, I paused it when you need to select an answer. No one was keen to volunteer their answer to the question so I just un paused the video and let it finish. What they didn’t know was that no answer is actually given in the video! So, when the video was over, they HAD to discuss and work it out and talk with each other because they really really wanted to know the answer. SO we ended up having a great discussion on forces in the fall, what is that rope actually doing, we talked about transfer of energy and all kinds of good stuff. I’m definitely going to check out some of the other little starter videos and try and sneak one in again 🙂

 

 

Soup in a can – a lesson in exothermic reactions.

Monday, April 13th, 2015 | EMILY HALL | No Comments

A while ago, a friend gave me this can that she had been given as a novelty prize somewhere somehow.

IMG_2357

Anyway, because it was “science-y” she thought I might enjoy it.

I must admit it’s been sitting on the shelf for a wee while. Mostly because every time I look at it and think I should try it out, something else comes along to distract me. Also due to being vegetarian for most of my life, the contents of the can have never really screamed my name. Recently though, I have heard advertisements on the radio for a similar or possibly the same product. I decided to pull out the can and give it a try. I don’t eat meat so I decided to use my carnivorous children as taste testers.

IMG_2359

IMG_2360

 

The can itself feels squishier than a regular can, like it is covered in foam under the label. I think the indicators on ours were not working because, as you can see, although the instructions said they would turn from black to green, both indicators were white initially.

Before we started, I went to the hotcan website to find out what was in there to produce the heat (water and calcium oxide) mostly because I wanted to cut the can apart after the experiment and didn’t want any chemical burn surprises

Pushing in the bottom of the can made a popping noise immediately.

IMG_2361

 

 

 

 

Shake it like a polaroid picture. We shook the can the required amount of time and then set it on the bench as specified in the instructions. Almost immediately, the can began to dance on the kitchen bench and steam was billowing out the bottom. (I told the kids to get back because I actually thought it was going to blow, thankfully this stopped fairly quickly)

After waiting the required time and using the ultra scientific method of feeling the can with our hands (broken indicator, remember?) we decided it was done and had a look/taste.

Reviews of the soup were favourable. The temperature was hotter than expected (said the tasters) there were no chunks, just a smooth soup. Taste was what you would expect from tinned soup. The boys did mention that there was less soup in the can than they had expected. The reason for this became clear when we opened up the can.

IMG_2364Inside the can you can see there is a cylinder coming up through the centre of the can – presumably this is so the soup heats from the middle to the outer layer. The foamy consistency of the can is a layer of insulating foam between the label and the can which would help with the soup heating, staying hot, and not burning your mitts off when you hold the can.

When we took the bottom off we saw this:

IMG_2368

Slightly hard to see from the image but it is like a bladder of what I assumed was water originally surrounded by a chunky white powder.

 

 

 

I asked the children (12 and 11) as I was writing today (2 days later) what if anything they had learned/remembered from this whole experience.

  • Water and calcium oxide produce heat which is transferred to heat the soup. You have to shake it to make it work better
  • When you burst the water packet, the water seeps into the calcium oxide, they must have measured the water and the calcium oxide so it produces only a certain amount of heat

An interesting and easy little experiment!

I found this Limestone Lesson Plan on the Royal Society of Chemistry website and thought it could be paired with the hot can for a great Chemistry lesson. Look at the Chemistry of Limestone lesson (which includes heating the limestone to make calcium oxide and then testing it with water to see the exothermic reaction) and then apply the knowledge to how the hot can product works.

 

 

 

Chemistry detour…

Tuesday, March 31st, 2015 | EMILY HALL | No Comments

Chemistry

 

My next post was going to be on the chemistry behind the hot-can and I am part way through what I think is a neat little experiment/lesson involving this cool (or hot rather) invention. Today though, I was derailed by another Chemistry resource!

I’ve been a fan of MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) open courseware for a while and I used snippets of it with classes and the OUASSA tutorials last year. I especially recommend their Highlights for High School where you can pick a topic and subtopic and be directed to a specific resource that may help you. Meaning for example, you don’t have to watch the whole lecture series on Classical Mechanics to help you in your struggles with Projectile Motion, the folks at MIT have pulled the relevant bits out of their screeds of material and collated it all for you. I must admit though to being so focussed on the Physics resources available, I was missing this little gem.

Chemistry Boot Camp is a multi episode show that follows 14 students as they go through a three week intensive lab course at MIT. The show is compelling for two reasons, first, it offers a glimpse into what life is like as a student at MIT and second, there is some really cool Chemistry going on. What I liked most about the show was that instead of just glossing over what the students were doing, there was an effort made to explain the Chemistry behind what they were doing and why.

The episodes are short – only 5 minutes ish in length and not counting the bonus episodes there are 11 in total, I managed to binge watch the entire series in a lunch break. A nice light Science meal to set up your afternoon.

 

 

Cool resource for Physics and Chemistry

Monday, March 31st, 2014 | EMILY HALL | Comments Off on Cool resource for Physics and Chemistry

websiteI ran across this website a couple of years ago but for some reason didn’t use it at all.

http://www.gpb.org/chemistry-physics

On the site is a complete course in Chemistry and a complete course in Physics for high school level in Georgia, USA. They consist of a series of videos, one on each topic listed with note taking guides and study guides. The videos are only about half an hour long and come with a problem set based on the video.

I am going to trial one of these in class today and also show the girls the link in the hopes that they might use the videos at home for their own revision. I was thinking too it might be a good activity for them if I am away so they can still move forward with their learning even when I am not there. We have a set of netbooks they can use and watch the material on their own if the reliever doesn’t have a laptop to show the whole class at once.

A classic Chem3.4 type question worth learning.

Wednesday, June 19th, 2013 | walda41p | No Comments

Have you ever wondered how to go about explaining the relationship between enthalpy of vaporization, boiling point and intermolecular forces? A thorough understanding of these 3 concepts is essential when it comes to tackling many questions that are often asked in the Chemistry 3.4 external standard.

Notice how the presenter uses graphes and diagrams to aid in his explanation.Old addage of “a picture says a 1000 words”. Use them as they can save you both time and space during the final exam.

Also, it is a good approach to draw the moelcules one beside the other, so you can make quick comparisons between the structures themselves and the resulting bp’s and/or enthalpy of vaporistion.

This a very common type of question, regularly asked in the external exam for Chemistry 3.4- Demonstrate understanding of thermochemical principles and the properties of particles and substances

http://www.noodle.org/learn/details/206549/1713-relate-enthalpy-of-vaporization-boiling-point-and-intermolecular-forces-ib-chemistry-hl

Grab a steaming cup of 1,3,7-Trimethyl-3,7-dihydro-1H-purine-2,6-dione…

Friday, April 12th, 2013 | EMILY HALL | No Comments

So this week I went looking for some cool chemistry resources. I stumbled into the Royal Society Chemistry page and found a couple of things I thought were really cool!

First – Feb 2016 marks 175 years of the Society and one of the things they are doing is a 175 faces of Chemistry. Little bios of Chemists and their lives. They reminded me a little of the Applications books where they use a real life example of someone doing something cool to explain some Science and I thought maybe they could be useful to get kids thinking about the relevance of Chemistry to them. The one I thought was super cool was a high school Chemistry teacher turned Fireworks guru – insert explosive learning puns here! Anyway – check them out: http://www.rsc.org/Membership/175-faces-of-chemistry/

Also on the website, they have resources for teachers, I took a quick stroll through those and I am going to use the one about the 100m race and acid/base chem in my Year 10 class next term. They are nice because they are ready to go ppt and notes with worksheet etc but also I was thinking with the 100m one it is loose enough we can add in some things as we go. All their resources are here: http://www.rsc.org/learn-chemistry/resource/listing?searchtext=&fcategory=all&filter=all&Audience=AUD00000001&displayname=teachers

And finally, the part of the site that dragged me furthest away from any useful work and perhaps proved to myself yet again what a massive nerd I am was the ChemSpider. This is the neatest little tool – you type in the name of a chemical (it was almost morning tea time so I started with caffiene) and it gives you the name, formula, 2d and 3d pictures as well as links to papers written about your substance of choice and all kinds of other useful information. Very easy to spend a lot of time in here exploring chemicals around us!! Fall down that particular rabbit hole here: http://www.chemspider.com/

And that is all from me for now, I have to get back to chemspider!!!

 

I had to get up anyway…

Tuesday, February 12th, 2013 | EMILY HALL | 1 Comment

This morning my lovely 11 year old nieces woke me up from a dead slumber with a 5am facetime request. I can forgive them because they live in Canada and don’t really have a handle on time differences. Of course their first question was “why is it so dark?” since for them it was 10am and daylight…

Anyway – I have been thinking about sleep lately because the latest issue of New Scientist covers the issue of sleep in depth. Recommended reading if you can get your hands on it. While thinking about sleep I also spent some time here warning though there are so many interesting interactive things to play with you could end up spending more time than you planned!

Finally nothing to do with sleep but I recently received an email with a link to the Quantum World song from this website. I watched a couple of the other ones and thought they were pretty neat. The planets one is good, and not just because Neil de Grasse Tyson is wearing a super funky tie in it. I have put the link to the Climate Change one on Knowledge Forum under the Climate Change question. They’re all worth a look though if you have a spare few minutes – maybe some soothing science music if you’re having trouble sleeping?

“Chemistry Matters” – Once more into the world of hydronium and logarithm; but never mind the mole

Wednesday, July 11th, 2012 | hamvi58p | No Comments

Once more into the world of hydronium and logarithm; but never mind the mole

By Associate Professor Allan Blackman
This article was orignally published in the Otago Daily Times on Wednesday 4 July 2012.

<!–Tel: +64  3  479 7931

–><!–Location: Science II, 5n4

–><!–blackman@chemistry.otago.ac.nz

–>

Last month I attempted to explain the meaning of pH in around 500 words. To my chagrin, I found that this was an impossible task. The column was littered with arcane terms like ‘hydronium ion’ and ‘logarithm’, and numbers like 0.0000001 and 1 × 10-7, things that do not make for easy reading. So let’s take up where I left off and see if I can’t do a better job in explaining what pH actually means.

What was hopefully obvious from last month’s column was that pH is far from a simple concept. For starters, it is a logarithmic function. In simple terms, this means that a change of 1 pH unit corresponds to a 10-fold change in the hydronium ion concentration – at the risk of upsetting the chemistry purists, one could say that a solution of pH 3 is 10 times as acidic as one of pH 4. To put this in a more understandable context, suppose we had 1 litre of a solution of pH 3 – if we added 9 litres of water to this (i.e. a 10-fold dilution) the final solution would have a pH of 4.

The useful pH scale ranges from 0 (a very acidic solution) to 14 (a very basic solution). Because of its logarithmic nature, this means that it spans a hydronium ion concentration range of 1 × 1014, or 100,000,000,000,000, between these pH values. To give some idea of the pH values of common substances, lemon juice, for example, has a pH around 2.3, orange juice, around 3.5, milk, around 6.7, seawater, around 8, household ammonia, around 11.5, and oven cleaner can be as high as 13, depending on its composition. Although it is supposedly common knowledge that pure water at 25 °C has a pH of 7.00, measurement of the pH of a sample of any water under all but the most stringently controlled conditions will yield a value somewhere between 5 and 6; this is because the water sample will contain dissolved carbon dioxide from the air, which renders the water very slightly acidic through formation of small amounts of ‘carbonic acid’.

So this is where we get to the importance of pH. Nature has evolved so that many of its important chemical reactions, particularly those that occur in living systems, are optimised to occur at particular pH values. If the pH of the system becomes too high or too low, then critical chemical reactions are impeded, and this can be fatal for the organism. For example, normal human blood has a pH between 7.35 and 7.45 – if our blood pH lowered to 7 or increased to 8, we would probably die. Nature has therefore developed a series of chemical species we call buffers, which ensure that the pH of blood does not change significantly.

Sadly, despite all I have written here, a true appreciation of exactly what pH means is contingent on understanding the mole, a chemical concept which is usually first introduced in 6th form (Year 12) Chemistry and is not necessarily understood by all even when University rolls around. My explanation of pH has only scratched the surface and is extremely simplistic – but hopefully it had given you some idea of what pH is all about.

Of course, the fact that pH is conceptually difficult doesn’t stop advertisers telling us that their clients’ products are ‘pH balanced’ ‘pH neutralising’, and other such meaningless terms. Treat all such claims with caution.

“Chemistry Matters” – Radioactivity in you and me

Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012 | hamvi58p | No Comments

Radioactivity in you and me

By Associate Professor Allan Blackman.  This article was orignally published in the Otago Daily Times on Friday 18 May 2012.

Late last month, a soccer ball that had washed up on Middleton Island in the Gulf of Alaska, was discovered by a technician at the radar station there. The ball was found to have come from a school in Japan, some 6000 km away, which was struck by the Tsunami of March 11th, 2011. In addition to the enormous amount of debris swept into the Pacific Ocean, the Tsunami also caused extensive damage to the Fukushima nuclear power plant, and released significant amounts of radioactive material into the environment.

It is a tragedy that the cities of Fukushima, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Chernobyl will for ever be associated with the word “radioactivity”. It is, in my opinion, fair to say that a significant number of people think of radioactivity as resulting solely from the actions of human beings, by way of nuclear power stations or nuclear weapons, and that it didn’t exist prior to the 20th century. So it may come as some surprise to you that your body, my body, and, indeed, the bodies of everybody on planet Earth, are teeming with radioactive atoms, the majority of which derive from a natural source – the element potassium.

Potassium (elemental symbol K) is an essential element for life. Humans require around two to four grams a day, and this is generally obtained from such foods as potatoes, spinach and bananas. But it turns out that, of all the potassium atoms we ingest, a small percentage are radioactive. Natural potassium consists of three isotopes, 39K, 40K and 41K. All three contain 19 positively-charged protons in their nucleus, but differ in the number of neutrons – 20, 21 and 22, respectively. The 40K isotope is radioactive, and comprises about 0.012% of all the atoms of potassium on Earth. It has a half-life of just over one billion years, meaning that one half of any sample of 40K will disappear over this time, and it decays by emitting beta particles and gamma rays, both of which are potentially harmful to humans.

An ‘average’ 75 kg person contains about 150 g of potassium. Of that 150 g, 0.018 g is due to the radioactive 40K isotope. This might not sound much, but when this mass is converted to an actual number of atoms, we find that it corresponds to about 270,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms of radioactive potassium in the body. That’s a lot. Given the billion year half-life of this isotope, you might perhaps expect that not many of these atoms would decay over our lifetime, but again, you may be surprised to find that around 7000 40K atoms decay per second. Each of these decays can potentially lead to DNA mutation, and there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it! Obviously it is impossible for us to gauge the health effects of these radioactive decays, as it’s rather difficult to prepare a potassium-free human.

Like it or not, natural radioactivity, whether it be in the form of 40K, the most abundant radioactive isotope in the body, 14C, which we ingest primarily through breathing in 14CO2 from the air, or literally hundreds of other radioactive isotopes, is ubiquitous, and will always be with us – well, at least for the next few billion years, anyway.

101Science.com

Tuesday, April 17th, 2012 | hamvi58p | No Comments

http://101science.com/

This website has a huge quantity of resources and links to some really fasinating sites.  This site would be a good go-to site for background science reading, information gathering and for studying just some of what you will be covering in your classes.

The site covers Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Maths, Electronics and even Photography.

Some teams look at the big picture

Wednesday, March 21st, 2012 | hamvi58p | No Comments

By Associate Professor Allan Blackman
This article was orignally published in the Otago Daily Times
on Saturday 10 March 2012.
blackman@chemistry.otago.ac.nz



My students do little chemistry. By this, I don’t mean to impugn their reputation by suggesting their work habits aren’t all that they could be. Rather, I’m saying that they do chemistry on a small scale. They measure masses in milligrams or grams, and volumes in millilitres whenever they carry out chemical reactions. There is generally no need to work on larger scales, as no new information will be obtained. Financial considerations also often play a part in determining how much material is used in any reaction – chemicals can be surprisingly expensive!

On the other hand, some researchers do big chemistry, whose scale is limited only by their imaginations (and money again, of course). Big chemistry usually requires the collaboration of lots of research groups around the world and is often aimed at addressing big questions. One such example of big chemistry recently resulted in a group based in the Chemistry Department at the University of Otago, along with workers at NIWA in Wellington, winning the Prime Minister’s Science Prize for 2011. The big question these workers addressed was ‘what can we do to reduce carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere?’

It is a fact that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are increasing. This could potentially lead to both an increase in the Earth’s temperature, and the oceans becoming more acidic, neither of which would be beneficial to life on this planet. It therefore makes sense to plan for such eventualities, and investigate ways in which carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere could be controlled if necessary. And this is where the work of the groups at Otago and NIWA becomes relevant. It had been proposed that phytoplankton in the oceans could potentially absorb significant amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during photosynthesis, the process by which green plants convert carbon dioxide to organic materials and oxygen. While this hypothesis could potentially be tested in the laboratory, it would really take a large scale experiment to demonstrate its viability.

And a large scale experiment it was. Truly big chemistry. It involved seeding a small area of the Southern Ocean with iron (about 1.7 tonnes!), to encourage the growth of phytoplankton, and then monitoring the changes in carbon dioxide levels, using a variety of methods including satellite surveys. You can imagine the wealth of coordination and cooperation required to carry out such a study. The results were interesting; while it was found that enhanced absorption of carbon dioxide into the ocean did occur in the seeded areas, it was also found that the phytoplankton themselves released other potent greenhouse gases, such as nitrous oxide, into the atmosphere. This demonstrated that such an approach would not be effective at mitigating greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.

This might appear at first sight to be a negative result, but thanks to the big chemistry carried out, we now know that we must look for other ways to avert the deleterious effects of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The Prime Minister’s Science Prize is worth $500,000. Given that a Nobel Prize is worth $1.8 million, I think that’s pretty generous. Time to get my students working harder…

Studyit!

Friday, March 16th, 2012 | hamvi58p | No Comments

New Zealand’s most popular student website turned eight on 1st March. Studyit www.studyit.org.nz began supporting NCEA students on March 1 2004. Studyit is a free, safe and successful online support site developed and managed by CWA New Media, a business unit of Learning Media.
Studyit has everything needed to get achieve, merit and excellence, written in student
terms, as well as fourteen very active
forums where expert teachers answer student questions at night, in the weekends and during holidays.
Recent feedback from Studyit students includes:
  • I got straight E’s in maths, thank you very much for all your help on this website, it really helped me
  • I just wanted to say a huge thanks for all the help I received from Studyit for my level 1 papers last year (I got 100% excellence!)
  • Studyit made a huge difference to the way I approached the exam! I tried to make my answers biologically detailed but concise even though I was really stressed for time.
  • Seems that all us Studyit users found the exam went incredibly well even though 3 News said it was really hard. I think this just goes to show the positive impact of Studyit on our performance
  • I went into the exam feeling a lot more confident knowing that I had prepared as well as I could – and a great deal of that preparation could not have been done without Studyit. It was so great to have such quick replies to all my questions, even on weekends and holidays.
Studyit gives students more confidence!

www.studyit.org.nz for NCEA maths, science and English students.

Studyit facebook
Winner of the 2008, 2009 & 2010 Net Guide People’s
Choice Award for Best Education Site

and
2011 Best Student Site

Winner of the 2006 TUANZ Education Innovation of
the Year Award

Finalist 2011 Australia and New Zealand Internet
Awards


CWA a business unit of
Learning Media Ltd.

Email:
ashley@cwa.co.nz
Mobile: 027 227 8603

Fax: +64 4 382 6509

Web:
www.cwa.co.nz
Postal: PO Box 19090, Wellington, New
Zealand

Excellent Revision Site for Chemistry, Physics & Biology!

Monday, March 12th, 2012 | hamvi58p | 1 Comment

Many of you may already be using this site, but it you are not, then I thoroughlly recommend taking the time to have a look around and print off some of the useful resources within.

Site:  http://www.nobraintoosmall.co.nz/

There are flash cards, revision activities/notes, test yourself activities and powerpoint presentations etc.  The site has been created and is maintained by a group of NZ high school teachers with knowledge and expertise in the NZ curriculum as well as NCEA.

You could even recommend this site to your subject teachers as they too would find it useful.

Teachers – Chemistry support website

Friday, March 9th, 2012 | hamvi58p | No Comments

About ChemTeach

This website is designed to be a one stop shop for chemistry teachers. It  contains internal and external assessment resources, teaching resources, news, interesting articles about chemistry in the community or cutting edge research, information about chemistry education initiatives, competitions, links to other useful web pages and you will get rapid responses to chemistry queries via our questions page.

The site is supported by the University of Canterbury Outreach Programme, the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry (NZIC) and Victoria University of Wellington.

There is an extensive question and answer archive on the site, courtesy of Ian Torrie. It covers a wide and extensive variety of questions that have been asked by chemistry teachers since the introduction of NCEA. They range from the trivial to the bizarre and while they are not “official” responses in all cases a variety of “expert” and experienced sources have been used to give the best answer available at the time.

http://www.chemteach.ac.nz/whatis.shtml

Chemistry Matters articles

Tuesday, February 28th, 2012 | hamvi58p | No Comments

“Chemistry Matters” is an ongoing monthly column by Dr Allan Blackman of the University of Otago’s Chemistry Department, on
topical chemistry subjects of interest to the general public, published in the
Otago Daily Times newspaper, and reproduced on the Chemistry Outreach  website. His articles are interesting and are all about chemistry and the world around us.

http://neon.otago.ac.nz/chemistry/magazine

The University of Otago has a great Chemistry Outreach team and on their website you will also find many more useful links to chemistry related topics.

Revision website ‘S-cool’

Monday, February 20th, 2012 | hamvi58p | No Comments

http://www.s-cool.co.uk/a-level

High quality revision materials using S-cool’s straight forward 3 steps to success process.  This site is from the UK and has a sepcific section for A-level revision (Senior Science).  Each of your classroom subjects will be found on this website.

1. Revise it

Check you know the main principles by reviewing the list of different topic areas, either click on the topic heading to quick learn the whole topic or pick individual principles to brush up.

2. Test it

Now you have learnt the main principles, test yourself with these sample questions. If you get stuck, go back and review the principle again.

Exam style questions

3.  Remember it

Print these out and carry them with you!

 

ESA Study Guides and Revision Books

Friday, February 17th, 2012 | hamvi58p | No Comments

Below is the link to the ESA Publications website.  Hopefully all of you will be focussed on achieving to the very best of your ability at the end of the year and during your internal assessments.  These books offer great support for a vast number of subjects at Y13 level.   They are useful for end of topic tests also and have full vocab lists for all of that tricky terminology (especially useful for Bio!). I highly reccommend these books as a useful support tool.

http://www.esa.co.nz/?type=catalogue-books&page=61&where_type=0&where_year=13&where_subject=all

Chemistry – Pathologist’s discoveries to dye for

Wednesday, February 8th, 2012 | hamvi58p | No Comments

By Associate Professor Allan Blackman
This article was orignally published in the Otago Daily Times
on Tuesday 7 February 2012.

<!–

Tel: +64  3  479 7931

–><!–

Location: Science II, 5n4

–><!–

blackman@chemistry.otago.ac.nz

–>


I was feeling a bit poorly a couple of weeks ago, so I crawled from my
sickbed and made one of my relatively infrequent trips to the Doctor, who
prescribed a course of antibiotics. While remaining bedridden and feeling very
sorry for myself, I had occasion to recall the interesting genesis of the first
synthetic antibiotic. It’s all to do with dyes, and a father’s great love for
his daughter.
Up until a couple of hundred years ago, brightly coloured clothes were almost exclusively the domain of the rich, as the dyes used had to be sourced from either plants or animals. The colouration of one of Julius Caesar’s purple robes, for example, reputedly came from the extracts of 10,000 molluscs, while to dye anything crimson required lots and lots of cochineal insects from far-off Mexico.
However, all this changed thanks to William Perkin, who in 1856, at the
ridiculously young age of 18, patented the first synthetic dye, the
purple-coloured mauveine. His discovery changed the chemical industry overnight,
and spurred an enormous amount of research into other synthetic dyes – indeed,
the chemical giant BASF was founded in 1865 for this very purpose.
In 1925, BASF, along with five other chemical companies, merged to form I.G.
Farben (‘Farben’ is an abbreviation of the German word for ‘dye industry’) and
it was to here that the German pathologist Gerhard Domagk took a leave of
absence from his Professorship at the University of Münster in order to further
his studies on bacterial infections. He was working on a virulent form of
streptococcus, and wanted to be able to ‘stain’ the bacteria so they could be
easily visualised. For this, he used a class of simple, highly-coloured
molecules called azo dyes, and found to his surprise that some of these showed
promising activity against the bacteria. Chemical modification of one particular
azo dye gave a molecule called Prontosil, and in 1932, Domagk showed that this
protected mice against lethal doses of streptococci.
While this was a huge breakthrough, it was by no means certain that Prontosil
would be as effective in humans. And here, fate intervened. In 1935, Domagk’s 6
year-old daughter, Hildegard, pricked herself with a needle and suffered a
streptococcal infection – in those days, such infections were often fatal. She
was rushed to the doctor, who recommended amputation of the arm to save her
life. Domagk, aghast at the suggestion, gave her a dose of Prontosil – two days
later the infection had subsided and, soon after, she was discharged from
hospital. This incident, along with other somewhat more controlled clinical
trials, confirmed Prontosil as the world’s first effective synthetic
antibiotic.
Domagk was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1939.
However, a law passed by the Nazis forbade any German citizen from accepting the
award, and he did not make the journey to Stockholm until 1947. Sadly, while he
was awarded the diploma and the medal, he didn’t receive the monetary portion of
the prize.
While Prontosil was soon overtaken by Penicillin as the antibiotic of choice,
Domagk’s work laid the foundations for all modern synthetic antibiotics. For
this, we should be very grateful.

http://neon.otago.ac.nz/chemistry/magazine/128

Scholarship support material

Wednesday, September 28th, 2011 | hamvi58p | No Comments

Hi there,

We hope everything is going well and that you are gearing up for your externals in November.  If you are after scholarship support material in Bio/Chem/Physics and Math we can arrange access to the support material provided through Otagonet.  You can access this material whenever you want and can work through a vast array of very useful resources/activities/readings and questions.  Simply email me (Kate) at ouassa@otago.ac.nz and she will sort your log in and password details.

We are also in the process of arranging on-line tutorials for those of you after some extra support using OtagoConnect software.  We will email you with details soon, alternatively email me and let me know if you are interested.

Keep up the good work,

Kate

Kahn Academy

Friday, September 16th, 2011 | hamvi58p | No Comments

This site has a vast number of resources covering much of your Y13 curriculum content… Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Maths (Calc and Stats) etc.  Useful tutorials to watch when you are sick of writing out your own study notes etc and just want to keep learning….

http://www.khanacademy.org/

Arsenic-based life debate continues

Friday, June 17th, 2011 | STEPHEN BRONI | No Comments

debate cartoonThere’s no more stimulating way to end a busy week than a good scientific controversy!

And we are NOT talking Global Warming  this time!

More than a dozen researchers voice their  concerns  about a 2010 paper that claims bacteria can use arsenic in place of phosphorus in its DNA and other biomolecules

Check out this story in Science from June 2, 2011 and associated links

http://the-scientist.com/2011/06/02/arsenic-based-life-debate-continues/

So, which side are you on ????

Particles

Monday, May 23rd, 2011 | KEV KNOWLES | No Comments

This achievement standard involves describing properties of atoms, molecules, and ions, and thermochemical principles.

Properties of particles include:

  • electron configuration of atoms and ions of the first 36 elements (using s,p,d notation)
  • special characteristics of transition metals (variable oxidation state, colour) related to electron configuration. Transition metals will be limited to iron, vanadium, chromium, manganese, copper and zinc
  • periodic trends in atomic radius, ionisation energy, and electronegativity, and comparison of atomic and ionic radii
  • Lewis structures and shapes (up to six electron pairs about the central atom for molecules and polyatomic ions, including those with multiple bonds)
  • polarity of molecules
  • attractive forces between atoms, ions, and molecules. These will include ionic bonds, covalent bonds, and intermolecular attractions due to temporary dipoles and permanent dipoles (including hydrogen bonding).

Thermochemical principles include:

  • transfer of heat between the system and the surroundings
  • calculations involving the use of specific heat capacity
  • Δc, Δf, Δr, Δvap, Δsub, and Δfus
  • Hess’s Law including application of ΔrH(= ΣΔfH((products) – ΣΔfH((reactants)
  • bond enthalpies.

Equilibrium

Monday, May 23rd, 2011 | KEV KNOWLES | No Comments

This achievement standard involves describing properties of aqueous systems using equilibrium principles.

Aqueous systems are limited to those in which proton transfer occurs and those involving a sparingly soluble ionic solid.

Properties of aqueous systems are related to the nature and the concentration of the species present in the solution. Description, explanation and application, or discussion of these properties may be qualitative and/or quantitative.

Qualitative evidence may include

  • correlation between acid or base strength, Ka and pH
  • relative equilibrium concentrations of dissolved species
  • variability in solubility of a sparingly soluble salt due to the formation of a complex ion, the addition of a common ion, or the reaction of a basic anion with added acid
  • features of titration curves including buffer region, equivalence point and selection of indicator (titrations of weak acids with weak bases are excluded)
  • the nature of buffer solutions.

Quantitative evidence includes calculations involving

  • Ka, Kw and pH limited to
    • solutions of bases, monoprotic acids and buffers
    • those in which the extent of reaction is small so that the equilibrium concentration of a dissolved weak acid can be approximated by the initial concentration, ie [HA] = c(HA)
    • pH at a particular point in a titration;
  • Ks and solubility limited to
    • AB, A2B and AB2 type solids where neither of the ions A or B react further with water
    • calculating the concentration of one ion given the other
    • calculating the solubility in water and in solutions already containing one of the ions A or B (a common ion)
    • predicting precipitation or dissolution.

Redox

Monday, May 23rd, 2011 | KEV KNOWLES | No Comments

This achievement standard involves describing oxidation-reduction processes.

Processes involve reactions and calculations, which may include electrochemical cells and their properties, the use of reduction potentials, and spontaneity of oxidation-reduction reactions.

Calculations may include determination of oxidation numbers, mole ratios and those related to electrochemical cells.

  • Knowledge of appearance and state of the following reactants and the product to which they are converted in an oxidation-reduction reaction is required.
  • Oxidants will be limited to: O2, Cl2, I2, Fe3+, dilute acid (with metals), H2O2, MnO4 (reacting in acidic, basic or neutral conditions), Cu2+, Cr2O72–/H+, OCl, concentrated HNO3, IO3, MnO2.
  • Reductants will be limited to: metals, C, CO, H2, Fe2+, Br, I, H2S, SO2, SO32–, S2O32–, H2O2, H2C2O4.
  • Appropriate information relating to other oxidants or reductants will be provided.