Work done by Dr Nikola Koepke (formerly from Oxford University but now at Zurich Universtory) looked at the remains of skeletons from the 8th century BC until the 18th century AD and used changes in people’s heights over this period as a measure of how well fed they were. The study combined biology and archaeology …
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Category:Scientific Method
Units and Sig. Figs…
With my holidays almost at a close (but you still have masses of time so enjoy it!) I thought it would be worthwhile posting this from Hank Green. It is the second video of a series on Chemistry from the YouTube channel – Crash Course. It is a new channel to me but looks really …
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Tryptophan…
I go on about amino acids a lot. Sorry about that! If you click here you will be logged into Focus eLearning (come straight back!), then if you click here you will be taken to a nice page about how the digestive enzyme pepsin breaks a protein molecule in your food down into individual amino …
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Degrees Of Confidence…
As should be very obvious from how governments around the world have dealt with recent pandemic difficulties, science does not deal in absolute certainty. We often hear that they are ‘following the science‘ but I suspect that allows enough wiggle room for them to do what is politically most appealing. Science deals with probability and …
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Standard Form…
This is especially relevant to those of you doing Radley Physics Papers. Joking aside, knowing a little mathematical notation can be very helpful. Often a “back-of-the-envelope calculation” is enough to use as a guide to the sort of answer you might expect. Standard form is a way of expressing numbers as multiples of ten. It …
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Oily Fish…
I have eaten a lot of tinned sardines this week. Call me crazy but a warm baguette filled with good cheese and four oily sardines makes a great lunchtime snack. I prefer the ones packed in oil to the ones packed in tomato sauce but I am prepared to be open-minded on the issue. As …
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Symphony Of Science…
I was browsing the Symphony Of Science website and thought I would put one of the songs on here. They are videos of scientists talking about “Life, the Universe and Everything” but put to music. A program called Auto-Tune is used to turn normal spoken English into sung lyrics. It is the same technology that …
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Clinical Trials…
I have mentioned clinical trials before and this video describes the process nicely. There is also a bit of history in there too – useful if you want to know why the Brits are known as Limeys in certain parts of the world. It was produced by the European Union before the Brexit vote (I …
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How Science Works #2…
The theory of evolution attempts to explain the many connections between all living things on Earth. The fossil record, evidence from genes, geographical distribution and laboratory experiment all point towards living things sharing a common ancestor from about 3.5 billion years ago. Simple, self-replicating molecules may have become more complex bacteria-like organisms from which all …
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Alkali Metal Error…
For a few years now I have been showing a clip from Brainiac when discussing the reaction of alkali metals with water. I can remember as a boy watching the following clip and being delighted when a piece of caesium was dropped into the water (that bowl is called a pneumatic trough by the way). I …
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