1. Girls in Physics Breakfasts in 2022
After a break of two years, the Girls in Physics Breakfasts are back.  There are now five events open for bookings.  They are:

• Thursday, 19th May at Monash University. The speaker is Dr Amanda Karakas and her topic is 'Stars as chemical element factories'.
• Wednesday, 1st June in Bendigo.  The speaker is Dr Semonti Bhattacharyya and her topic is 'Tinkering with atoms to build electronic devices for the future'.
• Thursday, 14th July at Warrnambool.  The speaker is Prof Frances Separovic AO and her topic is 'MRI of molecules: Where Biophysics meets Cell Chemistry'
• Thursday, 28th July in Central Melbourne.  The speaker is A/Prof Katarina Miljkovic, the AIP Women in Physics lecturer for 2022 and her topic is 'Impacts! Rocks from space colliding with Planets'
• Friday, 19th August at Mildura.  The speaker is Dr Judy Hart and her topic is 'Developing new materials for Renewable Energy'

Click here for more details of each event, such as promotional flyers, speakers' bios and abstracts of their talks.  There are also links for make a booking.

Cost: $15 per student if booking with a credit card through Trybooking and $25 if using bank transfer with an invoice .  There is a discount for low ICSEA schools.

The dates for other regional centres are yet to be confirmed and will be announced later this Term, but they are likely to be scheduled in Term 3.

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2.  Victorian Young Physicists' Tournament for students in Year 10 and 11
VYPT is back this year with a number of changes. For those not familiar with VYPT.  It is a competition for students in Years 10 and 11. During Terms 2 and 3, in teams of 3, the students experimentally investigate a common set of three topics, then on Saturday, 10th September in a series of one-on-one 30 minute contests with other teams, they describe their method, explain their findings, and question and challenge the presentations of others.
The topics for 2022 are:

• Conical Piles Non-adhesive granular materials can be poured such that they form a cone-like pile. Investigate the parameters that affect the formation of the cone and the angle it makes with the ground.
• Saxon Bowl A bowl with a hole in its base will sink when placed in water. The Saxons used this device for timing purposes. Investigate the parameters that determine the time of sinking.
• Falling Tower: Identical discs are stacked one on top of another to form a freestanding tower. The bottom disc can be removed by applying a sudden horizontal force such that the rest of the tower will drop down onto the surface and the tower remains standing. Investigate the phenomenon and determine the conditions that allow the tower to remain standing.

These topics are engaging, accessible at different levels, don't require a lot of equipment and not restricted to the science classroom. They are an ideal challenge for keen students.  They can also be done as part of the Unit 2 Practical Investigation Area of Study.

The features of the competition are:

• it is team based,
• focused on experimental investigations and
• uses oral presentations.

Prizes: There is a prize for every student, with major prizes for top place getters and a trophy for the winning team.
Mentors: This year sees the involvement of university students, who will not only assist teachers on the judging panels, but will be available as mentors to the teams. Teachers will be able to request a mentor for each team when they register.
Venue: University of Melbourne
Registration: This year there is a fee: $20 per team for a Vicphysics subscriber, $40 per team for a non-subscriber.  Registrations are now open and will close on 29th July, see links to 'Teachers' below. 
Note: One teacher for every two teams needs to be nominated, who will be a member of the judging panels on the day.
Travel Subsidy will be available for regional schools.

For further details, there are four relevant webpages on the Vicphysics website:

• For general information,
• For teachers to register teams, along with advice on planning, including a promotional flyer and a link to the video of Physics Teachers' Conference workshop with a discussion among a panel of teachers who have participated before.
• For students, with guide questions, hints and links to useful resources.
• For University students, interested in being judges and mentors.

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3. DET's Strategic Partnerships Program: A Vicphysics application is successful
Vicphysics has been successful in receiving support from the Department of Education and Training to develop and deliver in depth hands-on modules to build teacher capacity in 7 - 10 physical science teaching and special relativity. The modules will cover topics such as forces and motion, electricity and sources of electricity, light and sound and special relativity. Details of scheduling and information about registering interest will be announced later this term.

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4. Competitions for students:

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5. Useful articles from AAPT's The Physics Teacher
The American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) has during COVID regularly made articles freely available.  Two current ones of interest are:

• Charging identical balloons of different radii by friction.  Charging by rubbing different materials is a well known phenomenon going back millennia.  This article describes simple experiments to investigate the complexity of the charging process.
• Neutrinos. The article reviews the behavior of ordinary neutrinos. There are three known species of neutrinos can transform from one variant into another. This transformation, called neutrino oscillation, has been demonstrated only relatively recently and has led to speculation that there might be another, even more mysterious, neutrino variant, called the sterile neutrino.

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6. Where To With Physics. A new Careers website developed by Vicphysics

The new website 'Where To With Physics' was recently developed by Vicphysics with funds from DET's Connecting Learning to Work Project.
What does it do?

• It helps students identify their attributes in three areas: How I Work, How I think and How I am with others,
• links these attributes to various roles in STEM careers such as exploring, researching, communicating, innovating, etc.
• gives examples of careers where these job roles are important and finally
• provides profiles of individuals with similar attributes. The profiles include details of the work they do, what they did at school and university, and how their career has developed.

Please promote this website to your students, particularly those in Year 10 and also to the Careers teacher at your school.

A webpage on our website has more details. 7. Vicphysics matters

 

Online Lecture: Physics at the end of the Universe
Abstract: The Big Bang theory tells the story of the beginning of the Universe, our cosmic home for the last 13.8 billion years. But how does the story end? Katie Mack shares what modern astrophysics tells us about the ultimate fate of the cosmos, and what the catastrophic destruction of all reality would look like to anyone still around to see it.  Katie will be known to those who attended a Girls in Physics Breakfast in 2017.  Katie was the AIP Women in Physics lecturer that year.
The New Scientist is holding a series of on-line lectures 'The Big Thinkers'.  They can be viewed live if the time is convenient or viewed later anytime during 2022.
This lecture is on Thursday, 28th April, 6pm BST and on demand (Victoria will be 11 hours ahead)
Cost 15 pounds for a single lecture, 80 pounds for the series of 8 lectures.
For more details click here.

9.   Physics News from the Web
Items selected from the bulletin of the Institute of Physics (UK).
Each item below includes the introductory paragraphs and a web link to the rest of the article.
a) Friction does the heavy lifting in ropes and yarns
It is a mathematical puzzle that stumped Galileo, but researchers in France think they have discovered how rope and yarn fibres held together by nothing more than friction are able to carry heavy loads without breaking.  Researchers have shown that small twists in a rope multiply into massive frictional forces that lock the fibres together.

b) Conceptual juggling: discerning scientific principles through play
Children are learning kinaesthetically about gravity every time they drop something (or fall over); about friction every time they go down a slide with their shoes on instead of just socks; about circular motion when they feel themselves being pulled to the outside of a spinning roundabout. This is how we first learn about cause and effect, and develop a physical intuition about how objects interact.
Using playful exploration to introduce scientific principles is the thinking behind a series of workshops on the physics of circus skills, developed by a Bristol-based theatre group last year.

c) Acoustic clothing can hear your heart beat
A piezoelectric fibre that enables fabrics to detect sound has been developed by a research team in the US. According to the team, a single strand of this fibre can turn tens of square metres of fabric into a microphone that senses mechanical vibrations created by sound and converts them into an electrical signal. Reporting their findings in Nature, the researchers demonstrate that when used to create clothes, such fabrics could enable a range of medical and communications applications.