Cryolite – Everything you wanted to know and more

May 28, 2012

It happens every year doesn’t it? You are teaching about the production of aluminium, you say that cryolite is used to lower the melting point* and some bright spark starts asking you about cryolite. What is it? Where is it from?  and so on. Well todays positng...

Maxwell – Boltzmann distributions

May 24, 2012

This video does what I have always wanted to do in my teaching but didn’t have the necessary skills (or time) to shade in the black area on my white board. By now you are problem wondering what on earth I am rabitting on about. Well watch this video to find out...

Marking the exams

May 21, 2012

This year I am marking SL paper 2. The marking is carried out online and whilst I have marked for the IB previously, this is the first time I have marked online papers for them. I thought it may be of some use to you to explain how the marking process works …....

Amazing numbers

May 18, 2012

You can use these numbers when you introduce a ‘Maxwell Boltzman’ distribution curve. Picture a gas (say, air) at 15 oC What is the average (mean) speed of the particles in this gas? I bet you can’t guess…. It is a staggering 450m per second!...

A new EUR cat 3 service to IA

May 16, 2012

Did you know that there is a change to the ‘Enquiry Upon Results’ service this year (with regards to Internal Assessment? Schools can now request that their candidates’ work is re-moderated. Where necessary, a new moderation factor will be applied to...

Astatine (At)

May 10, 2012

We have probably all mentioned Astatine in our teaching at some point – probably in relation to the trends and patternss of group 7 elements. You know the usual patter – melting points increase as you go down the group, the colour gets darker and so on....