1. Webinar: Study Skills for Physics Students 29th April, 6pm - 7pm
Vicphysics is organising a Study Skills webinar for VCE physics students. It will be held on Tuesday, 29th April. It will be an online event from 6pm to 7pm.
The cost is $10.00 inc GST per person, which will also include access to prepared material.
There will be three presenters: Rachael Gore, Sandor Kazi and Colin Hopkins, each speaking for 15 mins on one of the three topics below, followed by 15 mins of question time in breakout rooms for each topic.
- The Science of learning
- Identify that the Study Design is finite
- What you know - what you don’t know. Fill the gap.
- Identifying your strengths as a learner
- How many past papers should be attempted
- How not to waste time when studying
- How the brain works:
- Structure of the brain
- Working memory
- Long term memory, and how to move from one to the other
- Forgetting curve
- Preparing for SACs and exams
- How to use Exam reports
- How to anticipate the types of questions
- How to write better answers
The program will be of value to both Year 11 and Year 12 students. Here is a flyer to promote the event to your students.
Students can make individual bookings here. Credit card is required.
Schools can make group bookings here. Credit card and EFT are available.
Bookings close on Thursday, 24th April.
The Vicphysics website also has two web pages to assist students Advice on Revising Physics and Advice of Learning Physics.
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2. Live stream Tour of the Stawell Underground Physics Lab (SUP
L) 9am 2nd April
'The Centre for Dark Matter Particle Physics, in conjunction with the Centre for Collaborative Education, will host a livestream tour of the Stawell Underground Physics Lab (SUPL) at 9:00 am AEDT on 2 April.
This event will include an overview of the science behind Dark Matter searches and its place in understanding our Universe, a live tour of SUPL, and time for Q&A.
Teachers and their students are invited to register for this free event at the following link. If you have questions, please contact Jackie Bondell
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3.
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4. Events for Students
a) Girls in Physics Breakfasts in 2025
These are the dates and speaker details for the remaining breakfasts.
The support of the Invergowrie Foundation has enabled Vicphysics to increase the subsidy for the student fee for the regional breakfasts. The fee this year is now $15.
- Bendigo, 20th March. Using Radiotherapy to Treat Skin Cancer with Emma Dyce and Natalie Clements, Medical Physicists with Genesis Care . Bookings closed.
- Mildura, 25th March. The Fascinating World of Solar Energy with Damaris Getanda from RayGen. Bookings closed.
- Ballarat, 26th March. Molecular Movies with X-ray lasers with A/Prof Nadia Zatsepin, Swinburne University Bookings open Closing date: 18th March
- Wodonga, 8th May. Breath of Discovery: Nanotechnology a Disease Breathalyser with Renee Goreham, University of Newcastle Bookings open Closing date: 28th April
- Australian Synchrotron, 5th June, Amelia Lui and Taïssa Danilovich, Monash University. Topic and flyer to be available soon.
- Traralgon, Early June.
- Geelong, 14th August. i) How important are powders? ii) Rethinking Waste: Engineering a Circular Future with Negin Amini and Sirjana Adhikari, Deakin University Bookings open Closing date: 4th August
- Melbourne, 20th May, The AIP Women in Physics speaker is Dr Danielle Holmes (UNSW Sydney). She works in quantum computing. Bookings will open when details of her topic are available and flyers have been prepared.
Bookings
Starting Times in 2025. This year the metropolitan events will start at 8:00am and the regional events will start at 8:30am.
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5. Other Events for Teachers
a) PD on SACs in March
Last year in June, Vicphysics ran a PD on SACs, partly in response to some schools' experience of the audit process, but mainly about the increased specificity in the descriptions of the four formats available for assessment tasks.
Last Thursday the program focussed on Assessment task for Motion in 2D and also AI in assessment tasks. Reports will be posted on line.
This Thursday's program has two sessions, one for the Fields Aea of Study and one for Electrical Generation. Participants will work in two breakout rooms. The first one with other participants planning to use the same format for assessing Fields, and similarly in the second round for Electrical Generation.
It is an online event, after school.
Date: 20th March
Times: 5:00pm to 6:30pm
Cost: None
To register and for more details. click here. The webpage also has resources from last year's PD
In the form we ask you for some information:
- In what format do you plan to do your first assessment task,
- If decided, the format for your other assessment tasks.
- Whether you can look after a breakout room and
- Whether you are happy to zoom/share your assessment task
b) PHYSCON 2025 - Making a Quantum Leap: Proceedings and Post Conference Registration
The “PHYSCON 2025 – Making a Quantum Leap,” was held on Friday, 21 Februar
y. Participants have on-going access to the resources of all workshops and to the recorded video presentations. They received an email from Zoom Events like this one.
Clicking on the link in the email takes you back into the event lobby. You can then click on the sessions tab and watch the recording from any of the 38 recorded sessions. For each session, if you scroll down to the bottom you will find a shared ppt and pdf resources as well as a pdf containing a link to a google drive folder which may include more resources in other formats.
Post Conference Registration
If you were not able to attend but would like to also get access, you can register here.
The fee is $135 with discounts for Vicphysics members.
The program can be viewed here.
c) Just in Time PD each Thursday of Semester 1
Each Thursday, two teachers will share their plans for the week, starting 10 days ahead. The PD is for teachers teaching Unit 3 for the first time or seeking a refresher course. The sessions are online and from the broadcast studio at John Monash Science School, so participants can see demonstrations and other practical activities. The presenters are Kathryn Grainger and Dr Penny Hale from John Monash Science School
The one hour sessions start at 3:45pm with the last 15 mins for questions from participants. There have been two sessions so far,.
Registration Fee: $60 with discounts available. You can register at any time, but there is no reduced fee for coming in after the program has started.
Limitation: Due to the conditions placed on the use of the studio, this event is only for teachers from Government and Catholic schools.
d) Beginning Physics Teachers' In-Service, Tues, 8th April
If you are teaching physics for the first time or returning to physics teaching., this workshop will be of value.
It will be on Tuesday, 8th April in the first week of the school holidays at John Monash Science School. Check here for details of the program and to register. The link in last week's newsletter incorrectly went to the 2024 event. The program has two regular features:
- practical activities demonstrated by experienced teachers and
- a presentation by Colin Hopkins on techniques for teaching and learning, which will complement his PHYSCON talks plus
- two other sessions from a list of four, based on the participants' preference when they register.
The cost is $60 with member discounts.
c) Out of Field PD: Special Relativity, Forces & Motion, Light & Sound
The Out of Field PD continues in 2025 starting in Term 2. The program starts with
Cost of each event: $265 per participant with discounts for teachers from Government schools ($55) and from schools with a low ICSEA rank.
To Book an event: Click on the link above.
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i) Vicphysics Membership and Access to the Teachers' Resources on the website.
Vicphysics has changed its membership structure, benefits and fees. Previously, a subscription to the website resources was separate from being a member of Vicphysics. Access to website resources is now being included as one of a number of member benefits.
Membership benefits include:
- access to teacher resources section of the website
- discounts to attend conferences, in-services, etc,
- certification for attending each PD event,
- PL certificate for committee meetings supplied at the end of the calendar year and
- voting rights.
Membership fees are: Individual: $60, Retired: $40, Student (tertiary): $40, School: $120.
Vicphysics also offers a Resources Access Only option without the discounts and other benefits listed above. The fees for this option are the same as above.
Existing subscribers currently receive discounts, which will cease when their subscription expires. At that point, subscribers will need to choose between the two options above for continued access to the Teacher resources.
We are looking forward to increasing the membership base of Vicphysics and to fostering member input into our extensive range of activities from Physics teaching professional learning such as our recent SAC PD events or the Physics Teachers Conference to supporting activities for students, such as the Luna Park Physics Days or photo and poster competitions.
You can join us here!
ii) Vicphysics Forum: Tips and Questions for the Physics Teaching Community
The Vicphysics Teachers’ Network has set up an online Forum for teachers to raise issues, seek ideas, offer suggestions, etc.
Link here directly, or look out for it on our webpage where it can be found at the top right of our home page.
We hope it will be an opportunity for mutual professional development.
The forum is open to all teachers. If you are a subscriber, you can log in the usual way. If you are not a subscriber, you can register to use the forum at ‘My Account’. Given the purposes of this Forum, we ask that you use your real name when generating a topic or lodging a post.
We hope this Forum will become a valuable medium for exchanging ideas as we begin planning the new study design.
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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) Ionising radiation: its biological impacts and how it is used to treat disease
This podcast features Ileana Silvestre Patallo, a medical physicist at the UK’s National Physical Laboratory, and Ruth McLauchlan, consultant radiotherapy physicist at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. In a wide-ranging conversation Patallo and McLauchlan explain how ionizing radiation such as X-rays and proton beams interact with our bodies and how radiation is being used to treat diseases including cancer..
b) Demonstrators march for science in New York City
Robert Crease reports "The Stand Up for Science demonstration at Washington Square Park in New York City on Friday 7 March 2025 had the most qualified speakers, angriest participants and wickedest signs of any protest I can remember."
c) How would an asteroid strike affect life on Earth?
How would the climate and the environment on our planet change if an asteroid struck? Researchers at the IBS Center for Climate Physics (ICCP) at Pusan National University in South Korea have now tried to answer this question by running several impact simulations with a state-of-the-art Earth system model on their in-house supercomputer. The results show that the climate, atmospheric chemistry and even global photosynthesis would be dramatically disrupted in the three to four years following the event, due to the huge amounts of dust produced by the impact.
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