Last month, I linked to a New Yorker story about managerial and regime failings in a US school, though I was more interested in the ‘infatuation with data’ angle than the ensuing misconduct. On Twitter, several people commented that they were worried we’d eventually hear similar stories out of the UK.
Academies run by a superhead praised by the government for producing schools that “outperform the rest” of the state sector had secret advance notice of Ofsted inspection dates.
Uh-oh.
With patience and a bit of wiggling, you can detect the magnet from nearly nearly three metres away. Which is astonishingly sensitive for a cake stand.
TV presenter & props chap Marty Jopson built a magnetometer using a laser pointer, a fridge magnet, and an Ikea cake stand. It was used a few weeks ago on BBC Stargazing Live.
(via Marty on Twitter).
Speaking of Michael de Podesta (see comments on previous post. Also: autocorrect wants to transmogricate ‘Podesta’ to ‘Pedestal’), he’s blogging the development of the NPL’s stand for the Royal Society Summer Exhibition. Well worth keeping an eye on for some background about what goes into a good demo. Knowing Michael, there’ll be some extremely subtle and smart thinking involved.
(Michael presented some of our physics demo films, shot in one of the archive rooms at the NPL‘s kind invitation.)