How electricity create magnet

This video is taken from the neok-12 program I posted earlier courtesy Unesco. For those of you who missed the opportunity of doing the experiments on magnetism, you can catch up via this video.

I an also testing out how to put videos on the blog.

Eggsperiment

The eggesperiment(experiment) story started with Prethini. She was from SMK Padang Tembak and she had been assigned a project on pressure. I had shown them a video of Dr. David Wheeler in Mahanakorn University, Bangkok where Dr Wheeler slept on a bed of nails but was not injured.

The video prompted Prethini to think and so she came to discuss her idea with me. Once I said yes and said her idea could be carried out and her concept was correct in Physics - Prethini took over and literally hatched it all.

She brought a tray of eggs to school, I only provided my camera and moral support. Two girls hoisted our slim Prethini (40kg) on to the tray of eggs and we took the photos. Our real challenge came when we showed the photos but people did not believed it was real so Prethini and her friends demonstrated this by standing live on a tray of eggs in front of a crowd of about 100+ Physics students. One guy in the crowd said that the eggs did not break because they had already been prehardboiled so Prethini challenged him to choose any egg in the tray to break it and he did break it and it was still as raw as from the mother hen.

Some years later after Prethini in SMK Seksyen 5 Wangsa Maju, I encountered Haikal. He found Physics difficult and somewhat boring. So I gave him Prethini egg's assignment and he learnt how to hoist himself and placed both feet on the egg tray together without breaking any eggs. No one could lift him up as Haikal was a good 70kg.

I inserted the photo of Haikal in the Form 4 Physics test paper and asked all the students to explain why Haikal and all 70kg of him could stand on the eggs tray without breaking any eggs using a Physics concept. From that moment - Haikal became famous in Form 4.

Furthermore he could explain why the eggs didn't break. His morale enjoyed a great boost when he was able to explain correctly in front of other students. After that I no longer had much problems with Haikal finding Physics boring.

We conduct another fun activity in the series of eggsperiments. Here a hard boiled egg with the shell peeled off is made to enter a conical flask using newspapers and matchsticks. Obviously physics is applied but I shall not post the answer here but merely post the picture here to intrigue the readers.The students have become so successful at doing this that they graduated first from using quail eggs to later on using the much larger chicken eggs. Also they have improved the speed by which the egg enters the conical flask so much so we included this in an event called the Science Explorace which is an race in conducting science activities between 6 classes of students outdoors in the school field.

The simple joys of being a teacher.

I am in the midst of marking Physics Trial SPM exam scripts. For some mysterious reasons, Physics has papers has been held only on the last 2 days of the Trial exam for two years running! Immediately after the exam was over, I was called out of school for 2 days of meetings and will be out for another 3 days of meetings next week. And the due date for the marks is next week! Help!

Every single teacher knows well the agony and labour involved in marking exam scripts and especially in this sort of situation when we have to complete marking scripts so very quickly!

But I have great reason for joy! 5 Dynamic 2010 has given me reason to sing!!! You see one student has given me a perfect score for her essay script 20/20!! Oh Wow! And another student who used to get miserly scores for her essay has now scored 15/20!!! I shall not mention names here but tomorrow when I give back Paper 2 to 5 Dynamic, they shall know of my joy and pride in them! Oh, it is so worthwhile to teach 5 Dynamic 2010! Also several students in 5 Dynamic achieved more than 40/50 for Paper 1.

This brings home a succinct truth for Physics! The underdog shall not remain forever the underdog! If the underdog is willing to learn from his/her mistakes, be willing to focus, be willing to change the style of learning, the underdog can literally fly! Hence my picture of flying dogs! Of course sometimes in the process of learning to fly, we suffer bruises and some painful cuts in strategic places like some of the flying dogs in this picture but don't ever let that stop you from attempting to fly!

Haha! the joys of being a teacher! Discovering and knowing for a certainity that underdogs can fly! I recieved a plaque gift from a beloved teacher. I immediately nailed that plaque on my office door because I believed in it. It said "Children are born with wings but teachers help them fly!"