Here are the answers to the twitter Science quiz. Let me know how you did @binny__sharma
1) Erwin Schrodinger 2) Venus - many think it should be Mercury but Venus's thick atmosphere it is easily the hottest planet. 3) Sir Joseph Wilson Swan here is the link. http://www.enchantedlearning.com/inventors/edison/lightbulb.shtml 4) speed of light in a vacuum 5) belt of Venus. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_of_Venus
0 Comments
Looking around Featherstone High School 6th Form building, it doesn't take long before you see a student with headphones on listening to some music from their phone or mp3 player. But has anyone stopped to think about what it is they are listening to? During one of my recent learning walks I saw one of my 6th form students doing just this and I stopped to talk to him about his choice of music. As it turns out he was listening to hard rock such as Rage Against the Machines. Now this begs the question what should students listen to when they revise? Is Rage against the Machine the best form of music? I suppose this raises other questions such as "should you listen to music at all whilst revising?" or "what is the purpose of music whilst revising?". I have started this discussion recently with many of my students and have some interesting points. If you don't know rage against the machines below is a short snippet of their work:- When I asked "should you listen to music whilst revising?" most students agreed that you should. Some would add that you should listen to light music and commented that rage against the machine was a bad choice whilst others said it doesn't matter what style of music you listen to as long as you like it. When asked "what is the purpose of music whilst revising?" most students said, "to help you concentrate." whilst some others added, "to help you remember things better". With this in mind I decided to do a bit of research. It turns out Classical Music is the best genre of music to listen to whilst revising. In particular studies have shown that the famous artist "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart" has been proven to improve retention, attainment and concentration in most students whilst revising. This is called the "Mozart Effect" and scientists are only just beginning to understand why listening to Mozart's music has this effect. I decided to test this theory out some more during my Year 10 Btec lesson. Here students were mostly doing independent work on laptops. Now normally this would require some advanced behaviour management to ensure all students are on task. Normally students will start to get distracted/lose concentration about 45 minutes into the lesson. So I explained the Mozart effect and put on some of his music. There was a lot of resistance for the first 10 minutes with several students complaining of head aches and boredom, yet 20 minutes in there was absolute silence. All students were totally focused and on task. When some of the students asked for help they were raising their hands and whispering. This was amazing! I played the music for the 1 hour and 20 minutes of the lesson and the results were outstanding. Students produced some of the best pieces of work I have had all year and even remembered what they learnt next lesson. So I urge all of you to download / buy Mozart's albums and put them on in the background whilst revising. It will take a bit of getting used to, but what have you got to lose? After all it isn't a coincidence that classical music is still so popular some 300 years after it was first released. If you are interested in the topic "should you listen to music whilst revising?" you might want to check out this page. Here is a collection of Mozart and Bach's compositions which will help you revise. Give it a try. |