We believe that physics teaching is a wonderful thing, but are aware not everyone agrees. In the UK more and more non-specialists are getting the opportunity (welcome or otherwise) to shine a light on peoples misconceptions about the World around them.We started this podcast to provide useful information about how some of the best physics teachers we know teach the subject. Nearly always the answer will be ‘do some practical work’, which we know is essential to grounding understanding as well as being fun to do and making lessons easier to manage.
https://the.physicsteachingpodcast.com
episode 8: Ways to talk about... Energy
In the last episode, Robin and Thomas were delighted to welcome Charles Tracy to talk about teaching energy at KS3. Charles generously agreed to come back for the next episode: energy at KS4
Charles lays out the rationale for talking energy using the correct terms: using adverbial forms really helps to enshrine the principal that energy is not a tangible ‘thing’ rather a quantity that we observe is conserved before and after a separate process has occurred. Energy is stored kinetically, gravitationally, chemically and so forth (nuclear-ly is still problematic though).
At KS4 the trick is to focus on the calculation. “If you’re not going to do a calculation, there’s no point talking energy”.
Links
- Our previous episode: The ” New” Model of Energy
- Teaching Secondary Physics Text Book (amazon or Millgate House)
- 9 Blogs from IoP about the New Energy Curriculu
- IoP Spark Questions about Energy (also available for download as a pdf)
Please share ideas or successes – or indeed questions – on our Facebook Page: https://fb.me/physicstp . You can also message us via our website contact form at the.physicsteachingpodcast.com, Twitter @physicstp, email using the address given in the podcast (if we remember), you could even email us an autio file if you are feeling really keen.
Music- Season 5: Crescents by Ketsa.
- Seasons 3 and 4: Disco Sheik by Podington Bear.
- Seasons 1 and 2: One legged equilibrist polka by Circus Homunculus.
- Occasionally we also use Cantina Rag by Jackson F. Smith.
The music is used under the Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License
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