I’ve had a lot of time to accumulate meaningless junk, inlcuding a great deal of paperwork with more value to the tree it came from than it ever was to me. Anyway, I’ve got a pile of paperwork scattered around me right and I thought I’d share any gems of information that come my way:
The Biological Sciences Review, basically the review for A level and GCSE students in the life sciences. It’s not the whole thing but a photocopy of a double page spread called Stuck with Structures? a guide to some of the compounds biology students come across in their course. The Review includes exam advice by Bill Indge, a name you’ll recognise if you’re in science education, probably alongside Rowland and Bailey.
This one was a freebie, a downloadable PDF showing some of the biochemical pathways of the cell including fatty acid synthesis and glycolysis. Ironic really, considering I finished a residential school recently on FA synthesis and beta-oxidation. I’d link to the PDF, except I don’t remember where I got it from.
Pulling Our Strings from Chemistry World, an article exploring the nature of chromatin. Nice article, and Chemistry World has both a blog and a twitter, so go take a look.
A printed out email that circulated for a while with wacky answers that kids put on their exam papers, including a deinfition of solution that I found absolutely priceless. A solution is an answer, but to chemists a solution is when things are still all mixed up! Fabulous!
A superbug cartoon (PDF), which I tracked down to page 13 of a review from a biotech portal in India, but I have no idea where it originally came from.
A Guide to Effective Scientific Communication, aka translation of scientific lingo, including this extract:
The 4 hour sample was not studied trans I dropped it on the floor
The 4 hour determination may not be significant trans I dropped it on the floor but scooped most of it up
The rest was pretty funny too.
Great Health & Safety Myths, I went to take a look at the HSE website, and they’re still doing them, only the section has been expanded to include a calender which you can buy or download. It brings home an important point, that health and safety is often mismanaged with people blaming the HSE rather than actually do a proper risk assessment.
Other lab techs’ll know what I’m talking about. The number of times I’ve heard an experiment has been ‘banned’, only to find it wasn’t and the previous administration couldn’t be bothered with the paperwork so they ditched the experiment. And then again, it’s a popular excuse to use on the students, especially in classes that are completely unmanageable where introducing volatile chemicals or sharp implements is simply asking for trouble. It’s more than unfortunate, it sucks, but until parents actually take a hand with their unruly kids, everyone else pays the price.
There’s a whole bunch of articles on nucleic acids, ligand binding and protein motifs that I won’t bore you with, plus a bunch of stuff on biochemistry from the RSC again. I won’t dig out all the links, but the site looks well worth a dig through.
Woot! My pretty, pretty OU Tree of Life poster from the Darwin 200 celebrations, which you can get right here. Go take a look at Evolution Megalab too whilst you’re at it.
Here’s an interesting little experiment to make glue from milk from, again, the RSC. There’s also a small experiment you can do at home, seperate out Smarties colours, like a a very basic form of chromatography.
Constructing a Standard Curve! I taught a class full of A level students this one, using BSA standards and a number of unknowns. Nice little experiment. And the MacGuyver Project from the Science Creative Quarterly, take a gander and give it a shot. I haven’t yet, but now I’ve unearthed this, I might have to.
Well, that was nearly pointless, but at least I have a shelf back.