Tag Archives: science

123. Jaffa Moon

I’ve just spent the morning doing a cross curricular primary reward project with gifted and talented Y5/6 pupils. I was working with two colleagues from Science and Art. We were doing SAM, rather than STEM. It was brilliant!

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We made bouncy balls, bounced them in flour and cocoa powder, videoed the impacts, photoshopped the crater pictures, compared width of impact crater with the height dropped (scatter graph), calculated the speed of impact of the balls on Earth and on the moon – we even did the Jaffa cake phases of the moon. Our scientist gave us the correct terminonology and we did it correctly, unlike the memorable advert:

Jaffa Cake advert

It did take us more than one jaffa cake … ahem, I mean attempt… to get it right. For the sake of accuracy, you understand …

44. Bad Science

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The application of statistical evidence in clinical trials is the underlying theme of Ben Goldacre’s work on his Bad Science website.

Bad Science

It is full of examples of where evidence, statistics and common sense are ignored in favour of good PR and dodgy scientific claims.

The book ‘Bad Science’ is an enthralling read. I had the audio book on my ipod when I was in hospital a while ago and still had to get the paperback because I wanted to reference and reread sections. Thanks to PG for originally telling me about it.