Smarter Scotland

When Smarter Scotland were looking for students who used science in ways that school pupils may not think about Clydebank College was approached. Chloe Galletly volunteered to do an interview and it was published in the DoScience website. Here is a link to the interview.

Inverse Square Law Experiment

There are two laws you should know about radiation. Can you state them?

Clicking on the title bar will take you to a brilliant simulation. It uses Flash Player which has now been updated in the college computers.

What is the meter reading when the distance between the bulb and the detector is 100 cm.

Now now half the distance. What do you think the reading on the meter will be now? What is it actually?

Try this again. Choose a distance of 90 cm. Meter reading =

Now reduce the distance to one third of 90 cm. What reading do you expect?

What is the new meter reading?

Now choose an original distance of 20 cm. Take a note of the reading. Predict what the reading will be when the distance is 80 cm. Now do it. Was your prediction correct (roughly)

Describe what is happening in your own words.

Can you please let me know if you were able to use the simulation. Just leave a comment and say whether you were using it at home or on a college computer. If it does not work at home you might need to download Flash player. You can do this by clicking here.
To leave a comment you can select 'anonymous' and type in the fuzzy letters. Thanking you in anticipation.

90 degree rule

The intensity of the radiation is greatest when the radiation hits the surface at 90 degrees.

What causes a Tan?

This link is to a nice easy animation which shows the damage caused by UV.

The Science of Tanning

Health Issues of Ultra Violet Tanning Appliances Used For Cosmetic Purposes.
This is heavy reading but has everything you need to know about sunbeds.

Skin Cancer Animation (2 minutes)

This animation describes the three types of skin cancer.
What are the three types of cell shown in the animation?

News on Skin Cancer (2009)

Here is some news on sunbeds and skin cancer. Within the BBC pages there are links to some facts about skin cancer.
Questions

How many types of skin cancer are there? What are they?
What is the most common type?
What is the most serious type of skin cancer?
How would you recognise skin cancer?
What would YOU do if you suspected that a client had a suspicious mole?

Black Skin and Skin Cancer

Do black skinned people get skin cancer?
Answer Yes!
The survival rate is worse than for African American melanoma patients than for white melanoma patients.
Why do you think this is?
Read this article to get the answer.

One reason why the outcome of skin cancer is often poorer in African Americans is that the disease is often diagnosed at a more advanced stage, when treatment is more difficult. Also, the type of melanoma most frequently found in African Americans is acral lentiginous melanoma, which is more dangerous than the types of melanoma that predominate in white Americans.

Infrared Radiation (under construction)

Link to Philips lamps
http://www.dehoogeweide.nl/irsauna-spa/designsauna/philips-ir.pdf
There are not many good sites for IR. The diagram of penetration of IR into the skin is particularly good. Notice that we split IR into Near and Far. Philips has split it into IR A IR B and IR C as in ICNRP.
Heavy Reading -http://www.icnirp.de/documents/infrared.pdf

Week 5 Introducing Electricity

Project Sol is a good introduction to electricity. It has animations to help you understand electrostatics. Mostly it is relevant to you but you do not need to know how a photovoltaic cell works - honest!