Personal Blogs

Last night at sunset I saw a beautiful iridescent cloud, the best example I have ever witnessed.

The photo was taken from my mobile phone and gives no idea at all really, but I hope you can just about see that the shiny cloud in the middle displays a range of bright pastel colours, rather like mother-of-pearl.

These clouds are quite rare. They are caused by sunlight shining through clouds whose water droplets (or ice crystals) are all the same size in any small part of the cloud but vary in size between one part of the cloud and another. They act a bit like an oil-slick on a puddle.

Atmospheric optics are an interest of mine. The most familiar example is a rainbow, but there are many others. Sun dogs are commoner than rainbows, but less conspicuous so many people have never noticed one. But as soon as you become aware of them, perhaps just from a single example, you learn to recognize the cloud conditions when it's worth trying to spot a sun dog.

Here is a gallery of remarkable photos of iridescent clouds.

When the head stuck out of the glacier
There was consternation
But looking into the records carefully preserved
Carefully preserved by the bureaucracy of the time.

They had an inkling of who it might be
So they sent down in to the valleys for ideas.

After time and search they found me.
Did I want to come up there or them to me?
They thought it was my father. I ascended. He was so young.

As far as we know it

No serious poet

Ever wrote a clerihew.

Or very few.

Here is my attempt at translation into Anglo Saxon.

Suddenly, late summer

the millstream's clogged.

All of us jostling against winter.

My parents wouldn't understand me now.

Even my neighbors grow rhubarb.

How do we learn?

Of course it makes a difference *what* we are learning. But evidence suggests that in most fields we will learn better if we structure the new learning.

This is not really a surprise. If we look at informal learning, even in adult life, we see that people fit new information into the matrix of what they already know. Of course they don't know they do this, it's just how they instinctively try make sense of the world. Formal learning often disrupts this process, because it offers fragments  learners can't easily fit in.

Back in the 80s Richard Skemp put forward the notion of a "Schema", which is just another word for a framework really. He was interested in mathematical learning, but I think his message applies in any academic sphere. If you want people to learn, make it possible for them to assimilate new information into an ongoing conceptual structure. Otherwise they'll find it hard to learn, hard to retain what they have learned, and at best the learning is likely to be shallow.

What reminded me of all this was that when looking for evidence of what works well if you are preparing for an exam, I wondered what the latest research pointed to.

I found [1] and from there [2]. I think in many ways this is saying what has been said all those years back, but maybe if we can bring the evidence base together better now these ideas will have more effect.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jan/08/five-secrets-of-successful-revising

[2] http://mindhacks.com/2011/10/24/make-study-more-effective-the-easy-way/

Feedback please!

No poem's a blanket.

Even the smallest have tiny holes

Leaking infinity.

Mosquito

Summer and the same old thing.

Good luck, let's enjoy it you and I.

We have recently begun work on the Uxbridge Dictionary of the Periodic Table. Here are 10 sample entries

Bromine: A mean brother.

Iodine: Thanks Dean!

Flourine: The floor.

Silicon: Pathetic attempt at a scam.

Boron: I'm not interested but continue if you must.

Gold: Similar to rhinitis.

Antimony: Preferring barter.

Zinc: Place for washing dishes.

Arsenic: Buttock injury.

Hafnium: 50% of Holmium.