WHAT did the inflatable headmaster of the inflatable school say to the inflatable pupil? “You’ve not just let yourself down, you’ve let me down and you’ve let the whole school down too!”
That joke is completely irrelevant to the rest of what I’m going to write, but if I had started off with “we bought a couple of hand-held LCD oscilloscopes the other day”, most of the non-physicists would have switched off at the first line.
An oscilloscope is a device that lets you see the shape of an electrical signal. Its first appearance in front of a class is invariably met with:
“Is that like one o’ they machines that shows you if you’re deid on Casualty?” Most oscilloscopes are cathode-ray devices - they use television tube technology and are thus bulky and a little fragile. My new ones are about the size and weight of a carton and a half of Ribena. Nice.
But there’s more. Oscilloscopes are usually fiddly to adjust. Entertaining though it may initially be for the fledgling physicist to display a string-vest pattern rather than a smooth wave-form, frustration soon sets in. Tasks such as measuring peak voltages are hard to master, or they were before the new equipment came along. It does all the adjustment and measurement automatically.
This will cause a sharp intake of breath from certain quarters. Another piece of apparatus that dumbs down the subject? No, here is another modern piece of apparatus like the ones people use in the world outside the classroom.
It is almost 28 years since I first entered a physics class as a pupil. On becoming a teacher, little had changed equipment-wise, nor did it change for a few years after that. Motion was analysed using ticker-tape. Currents were measured using analogue ammeters with confusing dual scales and add-on shunts. Often the point of an experiment was lost in the methodology. Damn it - there were times when I preferred chemistry!
Physics has to explain high concepts like relativity and quantum theory to uni wanna-goes. It also has to teach the would-be auto-electrician how to use a multi-meter. Whether we concentrate our efforts disproportionately on one of these groups is a matter for an entirely different debate. What is clear is that both sets of pupils, and all those in between, deserve the most up-to-date resources.
Otherwise, we let them down, we let ourselves down and we let the whole school system down too.
Gregor Steele nearly took his new LCD scope home to play with during the Easter holidays.
