1. Gymnasium Lectures (in person and online): 6pm Wednesdays, fortnightly in Term 3, University of Melbourne
This popular series is back in 2024, starting this week.

• July 17: Spectroscopy in Astrophysics: How do we work out what is inside things that are trillions of kilometres away from us? (Stephanie Bernard) Flyer
• August 7: Generation of electricity and power: efficiency, reliability and sustainability (Prof. Rachel Webster)
• August 21: Physics for Cancer Treatment: Particle accelerator technologies and radiation therapy (Dr. Jacinta Yap)
• September 4: Light and Matter (Prof. Harry Quiney)
• September 18: Special Relativity (Prof. David Jamieson)

Title: How do we work out what is inside things that are trillions of kilometres away from us?

Abstract: Astronomy and physics regularly examine the very largest and very smallest things in the Cosmos. By looking at the different sorts of light or energy transformations that characterise objects in our Universe, we can work out what they are made of, what temperatures they are, and even how far away the most distant stars and galaxies are. In this lecture, we will use concepts from Unit 1 and Unit 4 physics to discover what different colours of light mean, and how astronomers use this light to work out the
properties of almost everything in the Universe.

Bio: Stephanie Bernard is an astronomy and space science educator in Melbourne, Australia. She teaches observational astrophysics and cultural astronomy to undergraduates at the University of Melbourne, and also works as a presenter and educator at Scienceworks, the Melbourne Planetarium, and the Victorian Space Science Education Centre. Her research interests in stars and galaxies in the early Universe with space telescopes,

All lectures will be held in the Hercus Theatre at the School of Physics, University of Melbourne and will begin at 6 pm sharp, with snacks beforehand.  Whilst this is an in-person event, a Zoom link will be sent out to all participants in the hour before the lecture.

To register, click here.

2. 80+ ideas for Teaching Magnetism and Electromagnetism
You will have finished Unit 3 Electromagnetism for 2024, but there are so many well-presented ideas in this resource for all ages, that is worth including now to share with your colleagues teaching Years 7 - 10.
This resource is the work of two physics teachers in the UK, Simon Poliakoff and Dan Jones.  
Each idea is on a google slide, which are coloured-coded for age group.  Each slide also has a sub-set of icons selected from a set of over 20, covering ease of implementation and style e.g. demo, prac, simulation, video, story, joke, analogy, hook, etc.
You can open the slides directly or copy the file on to your own google drive for editing.
The slides are grouped by topics: i) Magnet, magnetic materials and fields (21), ii) Electromagnets (5), Practical devices using electromagnets (9), The Motor Effect (16), The Generator Effect (EMI) (16), Transformers (10), Motion of charged particles in Magnetic Fields (8).
There are also blank slides where you can add your own.

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3. Copyright Survey Questionnaire and Prize Draw
Copyright Agency is asking for your help by completing a short online questionnaire about materials you have copied and shared with your students in the past 12 months.
By completing the questionnaire you can enter a random draw to win one of five eGift cards from GiftPay worth $500 each.
The information you provide will help Copyright Agency make copyright payments to writers, artists and publishers of the material you use.
Complete the online questionnaire .   The questionnaire should take you less than 10 minutes to complete. Link to Flyer.
Complete the questionnaire by Sunday 15 September 2024 to enter the prize draw.
The Copyright Agency appreciates your support in this important initiative. These payments help Australian publishers, authors and artists to continue to create quality local educational content for our classrooms.

About Copyright Agency
Copyright Agency is a not-for-profit that collects and distributes copyright payments to writers, artists and publishers. Many of the writers and illustrators who receive payments are current or former teachers.
Vicphysics also receives payments from Copyright Agency, as a publisher of teaching resources. There is more information about Copyright Agency here.
If you would like further information about this data collection project, please contact Rosanna Arciuli at Copyright Agency by emailing rarciuli@copyright.com.au.

Privacy
To ensure confidentiality, the survey has been set up and is hosted by Taverner Research, an independent research company committed to protecting the privacy and confidentiality of everyone who takes part in any of its research.
Taverner Research is bound by the Privacy (Market and Social Research) Code 2021 which has been approved by the Australian government’s Office of the Information Commissioner. Taverner’s privacy policy, consistent with the Code, can be viewed here.

Prize Draw Terms and conditions apply. Click here for details.

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4. Resources from the PD on SACs

A PD on SACs was held last term.  It covered the Unit 3 Areas of Study and Unit 4 AoS 1 and was in all the four formats: Explaining, Analysing, Applying and Comparing.  Material for and from the PD has been uploaded to PD on SACs in June webpage .
The material includes:

• Questions for the groups on the Motion in 2D and Fields Areas of Study which participants had already done and questions on Electricity Generation and Unit 4 AoS 1 which most participants were yet to do or design.
• A short Powerpoint (5 slides) on the key pointers for each format,
• Spreadsheet of Performance Descriptors for the Area of Study and the skills of Communication, Data Analysis and Arguments and Conclusions, along with information on constructing a rubric for an assessment task from the worksheets in the spreadsheet.
• Check lists for each format. Vicphysics has prepared these to assist teachers in thinking of the aspects of each type of assessment task.  The check lists are not intended to be exhaustive, nor authoritative, but more a guide to the aspects worth considering when designing an assessment task or evaluating commercial tasks or those of other teachers.

Contributed SACs.  Participants have contributed assessment tasks.  Copyright watermarks have been added and they have been uploaded to a google drive to which teachers can request access by email, in the same way that Luna Park Solutions are made available.

Currently there are now 13 SACs on the google drive along with the material described above. 
To get access to this google drive, please email Vicphysics from a school or education-linked email address.

5. Events for Students 

a) Girls in Physics Breakfasts for 2024
Bookings are open and flyers are available.

• Bendigo, 1st August.  Speaker: Dr Nadia Zatsepin, La Trobe University, Topic: Making molecular movies with X-ray lasers.
• Geelong, 15th August.  Speakers:  Prof Bre-Anne Sainsbury, Prof Wendy Timms, Deakin University, Topics: a) The Gentle Art of Breaking Stuff, b) Locking Carbon in the Ground: How, When, Where?

The cost this year is $25 per student inc GST with the first teacher free.  A discount is available.
Please check the website for more details.  Bookings can now be made for the ones with confirmed dates.  The others will open for bookings as venue and speaker details are confirmed.

b. Virtual Space School 2024, 15th - 17th July and on Catch up.
This is a series of seven talks.  It is a partnership between St Paul's School (UK) and University College London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL). All talks are delivered by academics and experts who actively work in the field of Space Science. They will be roughly 45-50 mins in length with 10-15 minutes of questions after the talk ends.

Topics include: Rockets and Missions, Space Electronics, Human Spaceflight, Space Weather, Exoplanet Astronomy and Planetary Science.

Just one sign up is required to access all of the talks. They can be viewed live or on catch up at a later date.
The times for Melbourne are:

• Jul 15, 2024 09:00 pm,
• Jul 16, 2024 12:45 am, 6:00pm, 8:15pm, 11:00pm
• Jul 17, 2024 06:00 pm, 7:15pm

Students can register here, where details of the presenters are also available. There is no cost.

c) A Virtual Tour of Einstein’s Universe: Workshop and Public Lecture, 14th August, Swinburne University of Technology
Workshop: Swinburne is holding a one-hour workshop for secondary students starting at 5:30pm.
Activities include:

• Virtual Reality: Come explore the cosmos in virtual reality! Their scientists will take students on a guided tour of the universe, from the solar system to the most exotic objects in space, such as neutron stars and black holes.
• Badge Making: Students create a badge of their design to take home to remember this event
• Activity Sheets: Activity and colouring sheets with mazes, word searches, and crosswords, etc
• Tabletop Interferometer: How do scientists detect ripples in the fabric of space-time as they pass through the Earth? Join their scientists as they demonstrate a working laser interferometer and share how they use large versions of them to find gravitational waves.

Venue: ATC 103, Burwood campus, Swinburne University
Public Lecture by Prof Matthew Bailes at 6:30pm
Abstract: Over 100 years ago, Albert Einstein developed his General Theory of Relativity, a description of matter, space, and time that appears to defy our everyday experiences. In General Relativity, as a result of gravity, rulers shrink, time flows more slowly, light bends, waves of gravity permeate the Universe, and black holes can trap light. In this talk, Professor Bailes will use an exciting new virtual reality tool to fly around a virtual universe, visiting many naturally occurring gravitational laboratories that astronomers use to test whether Einstein’s theories provide an accurate description of the Universe.

Speaker: Professor Matthew Bailes is the co-discoverer of Fast Radio Bursts, founder of the Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing and Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav). He has been working on relativistic astrophysics for almost four decades and has a passion for public outreach and building radio astronomy instrumentation.
Venue: ATC 101, Burwood campus, Swinburne University
Registration for workshop or lecture, click here,  There is no cost.
This event is co-organised by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav) and the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing at Swinburne University.

d. VCE Physics Revision Lecture, Sunday, 15th September, On-line and at Swinburne University of Technology
This year's Revision Lecture will be held on Sunday, 15th September from 10:00am until 2:50pm.
It will be offered as a hybrid event, on-line and in person at the Hawthorn campus.
The presenter will be Colin Hopkins.  The on-line chat room will have experienced teachers available to answer questions.
Lunch will be provided by Swinburne University for the students.
Swinburne University will also provide campus tours and their Astro tour at lunchtime. These can be booked at Registration.
The cost is $27.50 inc GST and participants will get access to revision material.
Students can book at this webpage on the Students of the Vicphysics website, where there is additional information.

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6. Events for Teachers 
a) July Lectures in Physics, 6pm, last one this Friday at University of Melbourne.  Theme: Physics and Sustainable Development.

In this lecture series, 'we ask what role physics has in meeting the UN’s Sustainable Development goals. Coinciding with the first year of the UN International Decade of Sciences for Sustainable Development, these lectures will explore the intersection between physics and sustainable development: from climate action to affordable and clean energy, education to gender equality and beyond'.

• Friday, 19th July: Sustainability, Science and Australian Universities in the 21st Century. Join a panel of esteemed scientific, policy and climate leaders for a discussion on the role of Australian universities and scientists in the interdisciplinary challenge of reaching the UN’s sustainable development goals.

The lecture runs from 6-7pm (doors open 5:45pm) and will be followed by refreshments and the opportunity to mingle with the rest of the audience and ask the speaker further questions. 
Check the website above to book. 
Venue: Glyn Davis Theatre, Melbourne School of Design, Building 133, University of Melbourne

The first lecture in this series was on 'How Oceans affect our Changing Climate'.  The left graph in the image below is from the presentation.  It shows where the difference in the incoming energy from the sun and outgoing energy from the earth into space is being stored.  Nearly all is going into the oceans, and very little into the land.  The image can be downloaded here.
The graph on the right shows the Earth Energy Imbalance in Wm^-2 over time.

The lecturer also showed an app which displays on a globe, videos of the weather conditions.  It is an interactive animated map that is updated every three hours, see a frame on the left. 
The globe can be turned around to look at any part of the Earth. You can click on bottom left of the screen to select from a range of parameters to be displayed including:
Wind speeds at eight heights from sea level to the top of the atmosphere, Ocean currents, Gas concentrations for CO, CO₂, SO₂ and NO₂ , Particulates of different sizes, the locations of fires and coral bleaching.


b) Out-of-Field PD for Science Teachers: Forces and Motion (Shepparton), Light and Sound (Hamilton)
The next two PD events will be done in person and in the two full day format.

• Forces and Motion will be in Shepparton on Fridays, 9th and 16th August
• Light and Sound will be in Hamilton on Tuesdays, 13th and 20th August

Check here for details for these events and to book.

Cost: $220 per participant, with discounts available for teachers from Government schools and for teachers from schools with a low ICSEA rank. CRT coverage is available for teachers from Government schools.
 

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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) Could athletes mimic basilisk lizards and turn water-running into an Olympic sport?
Far too heavy to be supported by surface tension, basilisk lizards and western grebes can sprint for short distances on water. To mark the 2024 Paris Olympics, the article examines the physics behind water-running and asks whether human athletes could ever accomplish the same feat.

b) Experts point to Russia as source of radioactive ruthenium leak
The botched production of a powerful neutrino source is the most likely cause of a radioactive cloud that enveloped much of Europe in the autumn of 2017. That is the conclusion of a group of radiation experts from across the continent who have used isotope monitoring and chemical analysis to try and understand where the leak came from. The researchers think that the isotope involved – ruthenium-106 – was probably released during an accident, possibly an explosion, involving spent fuel at the Mayak reprocessing plant in southern Russia.Aerosols containing ruthenium-106 were detected in countries as far apart as Greece and Norway at the end of September and beginning of October 2017. The radioactive substance, not found in nature, was spread too thinly to pose a risk to public health but its geographical spread pointed to a major release somewhere.

c) A New Physics Theory of Life
An MIT physicist, Jeremy England, has proposed the provocative idea that life exists because the law of increasing entropy drives matter to acquire lifelike physical properties. It is idea that has generated an intense discussion.  Contributions include: article in Evolution News, BBC Science Focus and a review in AJP of a recent book by Jeremy England on his ideas.

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