Friday Funny

From xkcd

What's our job again?

I've mentioned in the past the wide range of extra curricular activities that we do here in the physics department - trips, astronomy, solar car etc.
Just lately though, it's feeling like we're starting to forget that the main focus of our jobs is supposed to be the teaching of physics!

The solar car project is having a big launch event on saturday. We've got Cambridge University coming along with their car as well as potential sponsors including McLaren and Jaguar. It's a really big deal and if it goes well then the project will really take off. It's a lot of work though. My HoD has been running around like crazy for the last couple of weeks putting arrangements in place. Meanwhile the organisation of the 2 overseas trips that are happening before christmas has mainly fallen to me and I'm worrying that it's all going to go wrong.

Lesson planning is virtually non-existant right now and last minute requests are becoming the norm. It's as if they've all forgotten that lessons are happening because they are so caught up in other things. I really hope that once this weekend is out of the way we can get back on track, or I'll be heading for a nervous breakdown by new year.

Health and Safety gone mad!

Over the Easter holidays, our H&S manager decided to take a look at our little observatory.

We don't have a fancy automatic roof (although we're trying to get the funding for one), so when we want to use the telescope one of the teachers ahs to climb up an external ladder onto the roof and open the dome.
H&S decided that this was too dangerous and had a safety rail fitted.

So what's the problem? In theory, nothing. I'm all in favour of safety and would never want to see any of my colleagues get hurt if it can be prevented. The problem with this particular safety rail, however, is that no one thought to ask anyone involved in Astronomy before it was installed. We got back after the Easter break and found a rail which blocks the view through the telescope! I suppose it does fulfill its purpose - no one will fall because the observatory was rendered utterly useless.

Thankfully after a number of testy e-mails a compromise has been reached and we will be getting a much smaller rail. If only they'd just consulted us in the first place!

Friday Funny

xkcd

Visitor from Rome, part 2

As expected, Brother Guy's lecture last night was awesome.

He talked about ideas in astronomy that were almost right, but ultimately ended up being totally wrong. He covered Ptolemy, Copernicus, my favourite astronomer Tycho Brahe and even his own master thesis from 1975 which was a study of Jupiter's moon Europa.

He's a really interesting and entertaining speaker and I think the students got a lot out of it.

A visit from Rome

Brother Guy has come to visit the school for a few days and is giving a lecture tonight on astronomy which should be really good.

I should mention at this point that I am not religious. I've no problem with people who want to believe in God, but personally I don't.
That being said, I'm finding it hard to understand the fuss everyone is making. The school chaplain is practically soiling his cassock with excitement that we've got a visitor from the Vatican and teachers are planning 'special' lessons for Br Guy to watch.

Why??

Ok, so he's a Jesuit who works for the Vatican, but ultimately he's a scientist and a really nice bloke. When we met him in Rome back in april he was great fun to spend time with and remarkably unpreachy. The way everyone is carrying on, you'd think that God himself had climbed down off his magic cloud to pay us a visit, or at the very least that the Pope had decided to pop in..

Never mind, they'll get over it. In the meantime I am really looking forward to tonight's lecture. :)

Vatican Observatory

So, the trip to the Vatican Observatory has been completed. A couple of hitches along the way, but mostly very successful.

Originally this trip was supposed to happen in december, but Gatwick airport was closed for 3 days due to heavy snow so we had to cancel. Actually this was probably a good thing, because Rome in april is lovely!
We had trouble getting hotel rooms as Rome appeared to be full, so we ended up at an allegedly 4-star hotel in some distant suburb. Not the best place I've ever stayed, but it did the job.

We were due to visit the observatory, which is located at the Pope's summer palace 15 miles south of Rome, on friday morning. Unfortunately we discovered that there was a train strike so we had to change our plans again and friday became sightseeing day instead.

Saturday was 3rd time lucky and we finally made it to Albano where the observatory head quarters are located in a former nunnery just off the town square. We were met by Brother Guy Consolmagno, the curstor of the Vatican's meteorite collection, who gave us a tour of the building, including his workroom



and showed us some of the books from the observatory's library, including a second edition of Newton's 'Principia' which did make me squeal with excitement ever so slightly (yes, I'm a geek!)

After a walk through the pope's gardens, we went into the papal palace where the telescopes are on the roof. One of the dome's was having work done on it, so we couldn't see the refractor telescope, but we went to see the double astrograph

which was awesome, and somewhat more impressive than the telescopes we have back at school!

I think the kids really enjoyed the whole trip and I definitely did.

Now to relax and enjoy the Easter hols!