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About

ian@schoolphysicsprojects.org

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