One of the most popular school holiday "science
projects" is to make slime by adding an aqueous solution of borax to PVA
glue. Young children, and adults, can have hours of fun playing with this oozey
slime, discovering some of its interesting properties along the way.
But what is slime and why should we be interested in it?
Read this edition of AUS-e-NEWS to find out more.
Subscribe to AUS-e-NEWS at https://www.ausetute.com.au/ausenews.html
This fabulous graph of enrollments in the most popular HSC subjects over time was published in the Sydney Morning Herald today:
In the newspaper article, concerns were raised about the declining number of physics students, and the fact that only 22% of these students were female.
What I see in this graph is a general downward trend in enrollments of most of these subjects. You'd be particularly concerned about your future employment prospects if you teach Ancient History, for example.
What I don't see in this graph are any dramatic increases in enrollments, so, where have all the students gone?
Are overall student numbers declining (and hence enrollments in individual subjects are declining)?
Or, are there other less popular subjects with massive increases in student enrollment?
If we are concerned about the lack of females in Physics (22% female) why are we not equally concerned about the lack of males in Biology (36% male)? Or the poor showing of males in English Extension 1 (33%) and 2 (29%).
We are still seeing student numbers divided along gender lines. So here are some "not-at-all-surprising" stats ...
And if I went back 30 or 40 years, I'm guessing the percentages would not be so very different.
What have we achieved in education in 4 decades?
A polymer is produced when lots of monomers bond together. Monomer has Greek roots, mono meaning one and mer meaning parts. Polymer also has Greek roots, poly meaning many and mer meaning parts.
So we can form a verb that means to produce a molecule of many parts. Because the words monomer and polymer have Greek roots, we should use the "ize" suffix, that is, polymerize. Yet, particularly in Australia, the Latin "ise" suffix is used to produce the verb polymerise.
The word, polymerise, would have a Greek root (poly, many), a French root (mer, sea), and a latin suffix (ise). This would appear to suggest that to polymerise would be to make many seas. On the other hand, a monomer would be just one sea.
Merde!
In chemistry we have a verb to describe the process of producing ions, but how do you spell it?
Is it ionize? (rhymes with prize)
Or is it ionise? (rhymes with surprise)
The root of the word is Greek, so according to my school grammar teacher, the suffix should be "ize". The preferred IUPAC spelling appears to be ionize, and hence ionizing and ionization.
Similarly, we also have a verb to describe the process of producing atoms, also from a Greek root, so the preferred spelling should be atomize, not atomise. Hence we form the words atomizing and atomization.
I'm sure we'll continue to see the alternative spellings with an "s" rather than a "z" but they won't get you a Nobel Prise. Surprize!
A backyard experiment you can do that will help you see Boyle's law in action.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHvGtWXTdso
You will find more information in the feature article about SCUBA diving in the June 2022 issue of AUS-e-NEWS.
IUPAC has updated the periodic table.
Time to update yours .... https://iupac.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/IUPAC_Periodic_Table-04May22.pdf
