I am currently based in Guisborough, a small market town near Middlesbrough in the North East UK.
A fairly busy sort of 60 yr old. Whilst teaching Physics in a local Sixth Form College I recently completed a Ph.D. in Computational Physics modelling the diffusion and crystallisation of hydrogen isotope ‘lattice gases’ in Palladium. Presently I am involved in post-Doc work developing virtual diffraction software to compute diffraction patterns from atomistic models i.e. directly from atomic positions rather than from an a priori known structure.
Outside of the teaching day-job I am developing innovative 'STEM' projects, especially in geophysics. I have demonstrated school/home geophysics sensing projects at the Newcastle MakerFaire 2016,2017 and 2018 as well as at physics teacher training sessions. More recently I displayed a couple of geophysics projects at the European Schools Science on Stage Festival in Prague where I was surprised and rather chuffed to be awarded by the Czech Society of Physics.
Active projects include Monitoring Infrasound, Solar Wind Station, Seismometry, Learning Physics by Coding, a mobile gradiometer for geophysics surveys, a proton precession magnetometer, and Designing Digital Chips using FPGAs. Collaborating with schools & individuals on joint projects we are particularly interested in forming networks of geophysics sensing systems. In this real opportunities exist for pre-university students to undertake original research.
I am retiring from full-time teaching by end 2024, in part to devote more time to projects such as these.
Significant Enrichment Organised
- Running higher level top-up classes for A-level physics & computing.
- Lightning Detector Project.
- HiSparK Cosmic Ray Detector for Schools.
- 'Programming for Scientists' courses.
- Physics Olympiad & A.E.A.
- School Seismometer.
- Build a 3d printer.
- Aurora Monitoring Station.
- Infrasound Monitoring Station.
- Introduction to L aT eX .
- Experiment based science E.P.Q.
- Physics/electronics project outreach in local secondary schools.
- Primary school - programming & electronics.
- Design a Chip - an introduction to FPGA 'programming' using VHDL.