understanding colors

In this video Neil deGrasse Tyson explains the Physics behind colors.

You can check this lesson, and create a copy from here (if you like it).

Here is another lesson as well (about light pollution):

ODS Summer School - Project Scenario by José Gonçalves de eufisica

Another educational scenario

Inquiry lessons in Go-Lab portal

There is an interesting portal supported by European funds about inquiry lessons through the use of online labs, simulations and data.
The teachers can search for a lab, an app, or an ILS (Inquiry Learning Scenario), and they can make a copy. After that they will be redirected to a portal where they can edit the lesson, create a new one or just they can copy the link to submit to their students.
To know more go to: golabz.eu

Engage your students in this new school year

If you want to engage your students in Physics and Astronomy (thinking in space careers), you can use this two videos to do so.

This one is a little portion of the movie Superman: Man of Steel. Jor-El is presented to the Krypton's council to talk about how Krypton's resources is ended and the planet is going to die. He is appealing to reach to the stars again, like the ancients did it before.

This second video is a promotion of the ESA Rosetta mission. We started a new space adventure...



Happy school year.

Virtual Visit to CMS at CERN

On February 25, 2015, at 15 hours, 150 students and 10 teachers in Escola Secundária de Penafiel (Portuguese high school), made a virtual visit to CMS at CERN.

The activity was promoted by the European Project Open Discovery Space (ODS), and it was made, for the first time, with a total of five portuguese schools: Escola Secundária de Penafiel (Penafiel); Escola Secundária Ferreira Dias (Sintra); Escola Secundária José Saramago (Mafra), Agrupamento de Escolas Dra. Laura Ayres (Quarteira); Escola Secundária Adolfo Portela (Águeda).

The students saw the control room, the cavern of CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) experiment, installed in LHC (Large Hadron Collider) and asked some questions to the scientists.

The students made a contact with portuguese scientists, Pedro da Silva, André David Mendes and José Carlos Silva, with technical support of Angelos Alexopoulos, Noemi Beni e Zoltan Zsillasi. They drove our students through CMS control room, and explained all the graphics in their computers, to the CMS cavern, 100 meters deep, and they explained all the objects observed, how it works and characteristics.

We achieved a total of 553 students in this virtual visit, and it was established a new record of students participating in a same session. All the students were pleased to visit virtually this especial science center.

Some feedback from our students:

“Hello teacher, I would like to thank you the opportunity to participate in something unique. For students that study Physics, CERN is the epicenter of investigation and knowledge. I loved the fact that we made contact with scientists and it was so fun how they present the detector and technologies provided by CERN. It was useful to extend the knowledge of tiny world despite the fact that we need such a huge machine, like CMS, to discover that world. To see all of this visit in real time image was exceptional...

Thanks to all, specially people at CERN and our teachers to make this happened.” - André Queirós

"Hello teacher, I'm written this email about our virtual visit to CERN. It was a visit that arises our interest and curiosity to know better CERN and the experiments made by scientist. The simple language used by scientists helps us to understand the experiments, and kept students' attention.

I liked to thank the availability and I hope someday to know CERN even better." - Ana Catarina Moreira

"Hello teacher, I like to thank you for the visit, even virtually, it was very good and educative. I hope to perform another visit, but this time a live one. I was curious on CERN center and LHC detectors, and the explanation of both made by site scientists.

I wish a year full of success and with new discoveries!" - João Pereira.

"Hello teacher, the virtual visit was very interesting, now I understand what happen in there and what scientists do, how do they do it and the level to acquire such performance in science and technology. It was important to see the detector and jobs possibilities to students. Thank you so much for this opportunity" -  Tiago Carvalho

Acknowledgements:

CERN: Angelos Alexopoulos, André David, José Silva, Pedro Silva, Noemi Beni and Zoltan Zsillasi.

School’s pilot teachers: Cristina Pinho, Marília Peres, Miguel Neta, Álvaro Folhas and José Gonçalves.

ODS support: Rosa Doran and José Gonçalves.

Schools: To our students, teachers, directors and IT technicians.

On the web:

CERN event - https://indico.cern.ch/event/365946/ (with video)

Portal do Astrónomo - http://www.portaldoastronomo.org/noticia.php?id=969

Miguel Neta - http://www.miguelneta.pt/atividades/81-cms-virtual-visit-2015

Escola Sec. Adolfo Portela - http://www.esap.edu.pt/informacoes/735-201503-visitacern

Eufisica - http://blog.eufisica.com/2015/02/visita-virtual-ao-cms-no-cern.html

Chasing Comets

This is the first Inspiring Science Education Hangouts conducted by Dr. Pamela Gay:



This is part one of two. See the second part here: https://plus.google.com/events/coli5l...

"The solar system is littered with Ice. The bulk of this material orbits quietly in the outer Solar System, but sometimes, something disturbs the ice and the come plunging in toward the Sun. In this Hangout, we will discuss comets, how we explore them, and how they brought water to worlds like Earth."

The educational scenario can be found here: http://portal.opendiscoveryspace.eu/community/chasing-comets-774702?msg_id=23134

Astronomy Education Alliance Meeting 2014

The Astronomy Education Alliance Meeting will take place in Cascais, Portugal between 8 and 12 September 2014, and co-hosted by the European Planetary Science Congress and Global Hands-on Universe. This meeting will showcase and discuss the latest innovative efforts in astronomy education, allowing teachers, educators and outreach professionals to combine efforts and focus astronomy resource production on cross cultural curricula utilizing formal education best practices.

For more information and registration go here: http://handsonuniverse.org/astroeducation/

Astronomy Education Alliance Meeting

A message from my friend Rosa Doran:

"Book these dates in your callendar:

September 1st to 5th - GTTP international training

September 8th to 12th - GHOU2014 / Astronomy Education Alliance Meeting

This year our anual meeting (Global Hands-on Universe 2014) will take place in Portugal. This time the meeting is in partnership with some major events. The event will take place in parallel with the Europlanet Science Congress 2014 and in the framework of a major Astronomy Education event: The Astronomy Education Alliance Meeting. The aim is to set the stage to discuss the latest innovative efforts in astronomy education, allowing teachers, educators and outreach professionals to combine efforts and focus astronomy resource production on cross cultural curricula utilizing formal education best practices. 

You can find all information regarding the meeting here: http://handsonuniverse.org/astroeducation/

As already is our tradition we will be hosting during the week before this major event, the GTTP international training. There are special conditions for people willing to attend this training session. All the information can be found here: http://gttp.ea.gr

We hope that you will join us in this event. We promise this will be an unforgetable experience in sunny Portugal. Some nice surprises are here waiting for you. Please join and spread the word."

I hope you can join us :)

IBSE about Light Pollution

Here is my presentation that happened in the Discover the Cosmos Conference (Volos, Greece - 2013).

The presentation was an Inquiry Based Science Education (IBSE) scenario about Light Polution:

Light pollution from eufisica

You can download the worksheets here: http://portal.discoverthecosmos.eu/en/node/195700

Physics Front

An interesting site for physics teacher, provided by the American Association of Physics Teachers

Amplify’d from www.compadre.org

The Physics Front provides high quality resources for the teaching of physics and physical sciences courses.

The Physics Front is a free service provided by the American Association of Physics Teachers in partnership with the NSF/NSDL.

See bellow for topics