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Blog posts

Curriculum review progress 2 December 2011

The review of the current Group 4 curriculum is currently underway to produce a new curriculum for teaching starting in September 2014 with the first examinations in May 2016. One report on the first... more

Paraquat 28 November 2011

I took some time off recently and went on a trip to India. Whilst wandering around the fields adjacent to the backwaters around Alappuzha (formerly Alleppey) in Kerala I came across a farmer spraying... more

Peer reviewed articles 2 November 2011

Two common errors when students write extended essays in Chemistry are that they only use the Internet as a reference source and that they fail to address Criterion F properly. Criterion F deals with... more

Failing Extended Essays 17 October 2011

Essentially a student needs 24 points to obtain an IB Diploma but there are also other conditions. For example, they must obtain at least twelve points in their Higher Level subjects and must not score... more

E = m(c + a little bit)2 24 September 2011

IB chemistry teachers who fret over how to teach students the correct use of uncertainties in their IA practical write-ups can have a field day over recent work from CERN in Switzerland. Scientists have... more

Chemistry/Art/IT project 13 September 2011

Those of you who have been to my workshops will know that I have a real interest in combining Chemistry and Art. In the past Science and Art were very much inter-related (see, for example, the painting... more

Chemistry, economics and mnemonics 11 September 2011

One element that everyone seems to know the value of is gold. Due to the ‘credit crunch’ and the continuing world economic uncertainties the price of gold has increased to nearly US$2000 per ounce.... more

Hydrogen bonding 2 September 2011

The more I look critically at the IB Chemistry Diploma programme the more I find that is either simply wrong or at best only a simplified half-truth. This is not to criticise the IB programme as such... more

Bodyscanners 29 August 2011

I suppose we have all felt like Loukai Phillips at times as we go through airport security. Loukai was so fed up with being body searched that she decided to take matters into her own hands and stripped... more

A novel use for biscuits 7 August 2011

In an earlier blog about the winners of the 2010 Nobel Prize for Physics I explained how Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov discovered graphene using very simple equipment – essentially some sticky... more