Well that's one stupid student - I could have told you which end of a thermometer went in the water since I was about 4.

Last year I was sharing a house with a teenager who had absolutely no idea that you could even put a plug on a cable, let alone how to actually wire one.  This isn't particularly a fault since all devices now come with plugs attached but it does show that what you or I take for granted is often novel to other generations.

- In maths you get taught an awful lot of theoretical calculations but due to the way the mark schemes are set up - in most schools you won't get told any applications for any of these, why you'd use them etc. because you don't need to be taught that - which puts a lot of people off (it put me off).

Indeed.  I hated maths at school and when I got to uni I was forced into a foundation maths course despite doing computer science course which included a maths for comp sci module.  I was fine with discreet stuff and logic but couldn't be arsed with imaginary numbers and the like.

I now spend my working life managing data, including generating reports and statistics.  Wish I'd paid more attention at school but doing stuff to lists of numbers was dull.

For that reason, I'm seriously thinking of doing something to try and help this sorry state of affairs - teaching kids what they should know to get into modern technologies - teaching them how to use and understand a computer, what electronics actually do, how theoretical physics and maths links into programming and software, what kinds of products can be made (what and where they are used) etc.

go for it!

Well done. 

However:-
LDRs are very slow and so there is an added delay built in. Better use a photo transistor or photo diode.

I did this last year with a laser and LDR.  I had to introduce a delay so it was timed properly - the speed of the LDR didn't hamper it at all.  What did hamper it was having to get the autofocus-only camera to focus, arm the flash, turn the light off, arm the arduino and drop the thing all in a rather cramped bathroom (the only windowless room I have).

Well I have decided on getting http://www.earthshineelectronics.com/10-arduino-duemilanove-compatible-starter-kit.html as it comes with a DIP Socket Uno. I'll probably get another component or two such as a 7 segment but does that look good?

His Beginning Arduio book is very good; http://arduino.cc/forum/index.php/topic,50214.0.html

Now this is getting off topic.

My experiences of physics sounds similar to AWOL's (although not so long ago ).
They obviously can't teach you everything about everything but we seemed to cover a lot of stuff. They have to make it varied and teach a little bit about most things as people all have different interests and will go onto do different things at uni and beyond (even if they all do 'physics' at uni).

I'm not saying that the physics taught at school isn't good enough, I was merely pointing out that since it tends to stick to the classical view it's all straight forward and can be explained by fairly simple maths. Therefore a teacher with any science or maths background should have no problem in teaching a physics lesson and any teacher should be able to deliver the material since it's not particularly complicated nor does it involve opinion.

I really enjoyed physics at school, that's why I did it at a-level.  If I didn't hate maths I'd have contemplated doing it at uni.

Sorry if this is a wrong place for it but I figured id rather have it moved from a General Discussion where any topic can work rather than put it in a place where it shouldn't be.

I've always been into hardware but the initial start up to really get into it was always just too much for me. Now that I'm looking around, though, it seems like I am able to generally afford stuff. And so I've been on Sparkfun looking into Arduinos, Kits, etc. to determine what I want for around $100 (Although less it always good).

And so I have a few questions:
1. What are some general things I should have just to get started and mess around a bit? I don't have a project in mind at the moment so I just want enough to experiment some.
2. I understand the differences between the SMD and the PTH version of an Uno, but what end result does it put to me?
3. Am I aiming too low or high with a budget of $100? Can I go lower or is it not high enough to realistically get started?

Hopefully with your answers, I can pick a kit or get the parts for starting out.

Thank you,

I started with that sparkfun kit (well, the oomlout version) and it was great.

And somehow I doubt that this crappy game is at all related to the us air force.

True.  Having the red box where the mouse cursor is isn't exactly what I'd expect, not is an uninverted y-axis.

4. This is different in the house wiring (behind the walls) where the colour (color) scheme is red for live, black for neutral an bare copper for earth.

Not any more it isn't.  You'll still find it in houses but it was phased out a few years ago.

Edit: just to clarify I mean in the UK.  We're now the same as the rest of europe in that house wiring is the same as consumer wiring.

Heh - slot loading drives - yeah I hate them.

I love slot loading drives.  I remember my first (and only, come to think of it) slot loader. It was a Pioneer, the jumpers on the back were soft and had handles and it came with a special pokey tool so you didn't have to unravel a paperclip to get a disc out of the drive if it was powered down.

Nostalgia aside, I've just ordered a PIR sensor (one of them little board ones rather than just the sensor), some buttons and a pair of wireless doohickeys.

I don't remember GCSE but A-level seemed to consist of leaving high voltage units on full whack and switched on when we put them away at the end of lesson. Mwhahahaha.

The physics you learn in school has very little to do with anything that's happened in physics in the last 100 years

How so?
Admittedly, I left school over thirty years ago, but we covered basic semiconductors (also thermionic valves), nuclear physics (including simple quantum theory), lasers (which were pretty new at the time!).
Have things gone backwards since the 70s?

We barely touched on quantum stuff and I did a-level physics.  We covered wave-particle duality of light but roughly, as in we did an experiment to show interference patterns but we didn't go in to the physics behind it nor did we cover wave-particle duality of anything else, probability fields, anything like that.

Since there's no opinion involved and it's fairly low-level physics sticking mostly to a classical view, especially at GCSE level, I don't really see a need for teachers to be qualified in physics.  Any teacher should be able to learn the material suitably well in order to teach it.

I was told 50% school physics teachers are not certified.

The physics you learn in school has very little to do with anything that's happened in physics in the last 100 years.

I've just googled this and a site pointed out that implied multiplication has a higher precedence than division. For example, 2/5x would normally be interpreted as 2/(5x)

Very nice!

So transport'll be a nightmare too.

Parentheses are messy.

48 2 ÷ 9 3 +


(been a while, I think that'll do it though)