Posted on 14 April 2011 at 12:06h

It's getting towards that last lesson ever for my second year classes, I've still not finished the syllabus with the HL so no problem thinking what to do there however I finished ages ago with the SL so am struggling to fill the time. Students always want to do something fun for the last lesson but to me its always fun so what's the difference (my students don't accept that feeble attempt to get out of making cakes either). Making physics fun is a bit subjective, to me it means rock climbing, fast cars and surfing but if the students don't share my interests then it might not be fun for them. Anyway, that's their problem, today we did some more rock climbing physics.

When I was instructing a group of students yesterday one of them kept shouting to the person holding his rope that she wasn't holding it properly because every time he fell off he went down. What he hadn't realised was that the ropes are elastic. Falling off whilst lead climbing is a bit like bungee jumping, you fall freely until the rope comes tight, if the ropes weren't elastic you'd break your back. This reminded me of an episode of a TV programme called "Blue Peter" that I saw when I was young. It was about the land divers from Vanuatu, It's bungee jumping from a wooden tower with vines tied to your ankles. I guess its all in the bending of the legs.