Wireless power

Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 7-Jun-2007

Imagine cell phones, household robots, MP3 players and laptop computers that can recharge their batteries without being plugged in. Some might not even need bulky batteries at all.

A team from MIT has just taken a step toward this vision of wireless power. The work will be reported in the June 7 issue of Science Express. This is the advance online version of the journal Science.

The story starts late one night a few years ago. Professor Marin Soljacic (pronounced Soul-ya-cheech) was standing in his pyjamas, staring at his cell phone on the kitchen counter. "It was probably the sixth time that month that I was wakened by my cell phone beeping to let me know I had forgotten to charge it.

"It occurred to me that it would be so great if the thing took care of its own charging."

Soljacic started thinking about physics and engineering that could make this happen. Several ways to send power without using wires have been known for centuries. The best known is electromagnetic radiation, such as radio waves.

These are great for sending information. But they are no use for sending power. Electromagnetic radiation spreads out in all directions, so most of the power would be wasted. It is possible to beam electromagnetic radiation in one direction. Lasers do it.

But this needs an uninterrupted line of sight between the source and the device. It also needs some kind of tracking device if the receiver is moving around. And it could be dangerous.

So the MIT team came up with a novel idea. They call it WiTricity. Using this they have now lit up a 60 watt light bulb from a power source over 2 metres away. There was no physical connection between source and appliance.

WiTricity is based on something called coupled resonance. Two objects that have the same resonant frequency exchange energy very efficiently. But very little energy will pass to other nearby objects.

Frequency is number of vibrations per second. Everything has a natural frequency, the frequency it vibrates at naturally. A child on a swing is a good example.

If given one big push this will swing back and forth at the natural frequency. A short swing will move faster than a long swing, so it will have a greater natural frequency.

Now suppose Mum pushes the swing any old time she feels like it. Sometimes she will speed the swing up. Sometimes she will slow it down. Overall very little energy will be given to the swing.

But suppose she times her pushes just right. The swings will get higher and higher. Energy is being transferred from the parent to the child on the swing. The reason is that Mum times it so she pushes at the natural frequency of the swing. This is resonance.

There are lots of examples of resonance. A wine glass vibrates at a certain frequency if it is tapped. Its natural frequency will be different depending on the amount of wine in the glass. So imagine a room with 100 wine glasses, each filled with wine to a different level.

If an opera singer produces a single note inside the room, the glass that vibrates naturally at the same frequency as the note gains energy from the sound waves. It might even gain enough to burst. The other glasses would not be affected because their resonant frequencies are all different from the frequency of the note.

These ideas apply to all kinds of resonances (for example acoustic, mechanical, electromagnetic). But the MIT team concentrated on one particular type, namely resonators that are coupled magnetically. The team explored a system of two electromagnetic resonators coupled mostly through their magnetic fields.

They found that the source and receiver were strongly coupled, even when the distance between them was several times larger than they were. This means power was being transferred efficiently.

Magnetic coupling is particularly good for everyday applications. This is because most common materials interact very little with magnetic fields. So power is not transferred to other objects in the room. "The fact that magnetic fields interact so weakly with biological organisms is also important for safety," Andre Kurs, a graduate physics student points out.

The design the team studied has two copper coils. Each is a resonant system. One of the coils, attached to the power source, is the sending unit. Instead of irradiating the environment with electromagnetic waves, this fills the space around it with a magnetic field. This oscillates at megahertz (millions of times a second) frequencies but does not send out any energy at first.

But when the receiving unit, which has the same resonant frequency, is brought into this field, energy is transferred. The coupled resonance means that the sending unit and receiving unit are strongly connected. But everything else around is not. Moffatt, an MIT undergraduate in physics, explains:

"The crucial advantage of using the non-radiative field lies in the fact that most of the power not picked up by the receiving coil remains bound to the vicinity of the sending unit, instead of being radiated into the environment and lost."

With such a design, power transfer has a limited range. The range is shorter for smaller-size receivers.

Even so, for a laptop-sized coil, power levels more than enough to run a laptop can be transferred over a distance the size of a room. This works well in pretty much all directions. It even works when there are objects between the source and the receiver.

Professor Peter Fisher says: "As long as the laptop is in a room equipped with a source of such wireless power, it would charge automatically, without having to be plugged in. In fact, it would not even need a battery to operate inside of such a room."

In the long run, this could reduce our need for batteries, which are heavy, expensive and harmful to the environment.

WiTricity is based on very well known laws of physics. So why has no one thought of it before? "In the past, there was no great demand for such a system, so people did not have a strong motivation to look into it," says Professor John Joannopoulos.

In recent years portable electronic devices, such as laptops, cell phones, iPods and even household robots have become much more common, he says. "All of these require batteries that need to be recharged often."

As for the future, Soljacic says, "Once, when my son was about three years old, we visited his grandparents' house. They had a 20-year-old phone and my son picked up the handset, asking, 'Dad, why is this phone attached with a cord to the wall?'

"That is the mindset of a child growing up in a wireless world. My best response was, 'It is strange and awkward, isn't it? Hopefully, we will be getting rid of some more wires and also batteries soon.'"

More help with words

cycles

device

electromagnetic

electron

energy

field

frequency

natural frequency

radiation

resonance

response

spirals

vibrate

vibration

What's it all about?

1. This story is about being able to recharge everyday things without having to plug them in to an electricity supply. This is called -------- power.
2. Why was Prof Soljacic in his pyjamas when the idea for this research first came to him?
3. How many times had he been wakened that month by his mobile phone beeping?
4. Why was it beeping?
5. One way to send energy without using wires is by electromagnetic radiation. Give one reason this is not likely to work well.
6. Why might it be dangerous?
7. What does MIT call their new method?
8. What electrical item did they use in their demonstration?
9. In your own words what does "no physical connection" mean?
10. What is a natural frequency?
11. Resonance is when energy gets transferred very effectively because it is supplied at the same -------- as the natural frequency of an object.
12. The writer gives a couple of examples of resonance to help explain what the scientists have been doing. Pick one of these and describe very briefly what happens at resonance.
13. Resonance can take place with all sorts of things, such as sounds or moving objects. What did the MIT scientists concentrate on in their work?
14. Resonance is all about the frequency of the energy supplied being the same as the ------- frequency of the thing receiving the energy.
15. Frequency is fairly easily understood when you can see something moving back and forth like a child on a swing. The frequency of a child on a swing is the ------ of times she swings back and forth in a certain time.
16. But frequency is a useful idea for anything that is moving or changing, even when it's too small or moving too fast to see. The frequency of a sound for instance is the number of pressure waves in the --- that hit your ear in a second.
17. The frequency of a magnetic field is the number of times it ------- direction in a second.
18. The frequency of the magnetic field the scientists used was several megahertz, the writer says. This means it changes direction -------- of times a second.
19. At first there is a coil in the room that is producing a rapidly changing magnetic field. But it is not sending out any ------.
20. Then when a second coil is brought fairly close to the first, energy passes. But only if the natural frequency of the second coil is the ---- as the natural frequency of the first.
21. Moffatt refers to a "non-radiative field". What does "non-radiative" mean?
22. A radiative field produces electromagnetic radiation. In question 5 you gave one reason for not using electromagnetic radiation for wireless energy. Now find as many reasons in the story as you can for not using electromagnetic radiation for wireless energy.
23. State one disadvantage of the method these scientists have developed.
24. If you were these scientists what would you like to do next?
25. Why?

What kind of story is this?
Learning to do science is about learning to think. Experiments, direct teaching, group activities and discussions all have a part to play. So do science news stories.

Like other non-fiction texts, science stories contain different kinds of statements. To get at the science behind the words - and to make reading them an active experience - students should pull a text apart and explore the kinds of statement it contains.

We've met some of these in the later questions of the previous activity. Science news stories usually include the aims of the research or reasons for doing it. They often contain a hypothesis. Sometimes evidence for a hypothesis is given, or a hypothesis is used to make a prediction. Towards the end of a story the direction of future research the scientists are planning is often discussed, as well as outstanding questions the research will be designed to answer.

All these types of statement occur in some science stories. Virtually all science stories, however, will contain statements of the following four types:

• new findings or developments;
• the technology and methods the scientists used;
• previous or accepted knowledge, which may or may not be supported by the new findings;
• issues, implications and applications of the research.

So the next activity is designed to engage students with the latest science news by exploring the meaning and structure of a story as revealed by the content and balance of these four statement types:

Pulling it apart
In groups students should read through the story looking for new findings or developments. Once they have reached agreement, or at least consensus, and have underlined all the statements about what the scientists have just discovered or achieved, they can compare and discuss.

In groups they should go through the story again looking for the technology and methods the scientists used in their research. Once they have reached agreement or consensus, and have underlined the statements that talk about the methods and equipment the scientists used, they can compare and discuss.

They should repeat the activity for existing knowledge.

Any areas of disagreement in these activities - whether among the students or between teacher and students - should be regarded as opportunities for discussion rather than errors to be corrected.

Having fully engaged with the latest science news through the above activities, students will be far better able to talk and think about the science and its implications than someone who has simply read about it in a newspaper or watched a brief item on television.

Now it's time for them to get to grips with the issues raised by the research.

Young people have opinions. But school science traditionally allowed little scope for forming and expressing these - which is why it turned many of them off the subject for life.

Putting it together again

In groups, students should read through the latest story looking for issues, implications and applications. Once they have reached agreement, or at least consensus, and have underlined all the relevant statements in the story, they can compare and discuss.

Having done all this the students are well armed to explore the issues raised by the story. A suggested discussion topic specific to this new story is provided below.

Topic for discussion, research or pupil presentations

This is a tough story for schoolkids. Resonance is university level science and engineering, and electromagnetic induction is upper high school. But the philosophy of this website, and the whole science in society movement, is that you don't need a PhD in nuclear physics to engage with the key ideas of modern science.

The key ideas in this story are resonance, natural frequency and the difference between WiTricity and electromagnetic radiation.

A) In groups students should research as many examples of resonance as they can find. They should then prepare a short presentation to explain how their favourites among these work, and the principle that is common to them all.

They may find the following websites useful starting points:

Earthquakes, bridges, seashells, all from Discovery Education

Vibrating strings from Nova

Musical instruments from the Physics Classroom

Guitars and rockets from NASA (podcast and transcript)

Tacoma Narrows collapse from Nova

B) In groups they should compile a list of similarities between WiTricity and electromagnetic radiation. They should then compile a list of differences. They should brainstorm these tasks at first, writing down every suggestion from the group, no matter how trivial or even frivolous they seem. Only when this is complete should they examine each item, retaining any that has a grain of truth.

Tips for science class discussions and groupwork

No 51

As part of their report they must submit 5 new words/terms they learned, summarize the article, give me a complete citation as for a bibliography (MLA format), 5 questions that they would like to ask the author, the subject, or anyone about the article. They must tell me how the illustrations helped or detracted from their understanding of the article; and give me 2 questions that refer to the illustrations.

"You might try magazine articles - I've done this with my older kids using 5 magazine articles from an 'approved magazine' typically, Smithsonian or National Geographic.

This has been great for pushing them to look at periodicals, and using another source for reading material. For my purposes, I don't restrict the topics, so it's fun to see the things they are interested in beyond what we cover in class. I take a day and try to answer their questions if I can, or point them to where they can find out more for themselves.

National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) forum entry by teacher Kathleen Gorski (May 2007)

Emissions trading works

The European Union's emissions trading scheme is the most important achievement to date in climate policy. This is the conclusion of articles in the first issue of a new journal, Review of Environmental Economics and Policy.

But Europe emits only a fifth of global greenhouse gases. So the authors also conclude that a worldwide climate policy is needed.

The articles are by leading environmental economists. They review how well the European Union's emissions trading scheme has worked in the first two years of its three-year trial, from 2005 to 2007.

The emissions trading scheme is an ambitious effort to correct for the failure of the economic system that is causing climate change. It aims to deliver the reduced carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions the EU has agreed to under the Kyoto Protocol.

The scheme works like this. An industrial plant or electric utility that uses a lot of energy is allowed to buy the rights to emit CO2. So the more it emits the more money it costs. This creates pressure on the company to reduce its emissions and save money.

The European Union has succeeded in placing a price on CO2. And this price is starting to reflect the limited ability of the atmosphere to absorb more greenhouse gases.

The scheme is easily the largest emissions trading scheme in the world. It covers about half the CO2 emissions in a region that produces 17% of the world’s energy-related CO2 emissions. The value traded so far is estimated at 14.7 billion euros ($18.86 billion).

The papers discuss the key role played by the European Commission in establishing the emissions trading scheme. Its main role was to make allowances scarce. This made them valuable enough to be traded.

At the beginning all the countries in the EU put claims to the Commission for the number of allowances that would go to each of them. The Commission reduced these numbers in 14 of the 25 countries. The total reduction was almost 100 million tonnes of CO2 a year.

The first year of the scheme was 2005. A review of emissions for this year showed that actual emissions were about 80 million tonnes of CO2 less than the allowances. This was about 4% of the EU's intended maximum emissions.

The emissions were greater than the allowances in only 6 of the 25 EU countries. These were the UK, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Austria and Greece. Organisations might have reduced their emissions by any of several methods.

These include improvements in technology, investment in energy efficiency or switching to fuels that emit lower levels of CO2.

Allowances were greater than emissions for two reasons. One was that too many were given to some countries and sectors. But the other was that emissions actually did fall in 2005 because of the price of the allowances.

Allowance prices in the first year of the emissions trading scheme were higher than expected by analysts and academics. Between July 2005 and April 2006, the allowance price was consistently being bought and sold above the 21-30 euro range.

A persistently high price in a market with many trades between sophisticated players is good evidence that the scheme works. Emissions are being reduced.

Analysis of the actual emissions data confirms this. It suggests that they fell by about 7%.

The Commission intends to encourage further reductions by making the 2008-12 allowances lower than those in 2005-07. It will reduce the allowance totals proposed by 10 member states to less than 90% of their trial-period values.

The papers conclude that the EU emissions trading scheme is important because of its size and the number of countries taking part. It shows that emissions trading works.

There are signs that the scheme has laid the groundwork for a global system. But if CO2 emissions are to be reduced worldwide then we need a worldwide emissions-reducing system. It would be difficult to create such a global system.

One problem is that there is no world equivalent of the European Commission. A worldwide community of interest among countries does not exist. So emissions trading in developing countries might not be a realistic goal any time soon. Other national initiatives are unlikely to link to the European emissions trading scheme. Different methods need to be looked at.

The long-term future of the European emissions trading scheme seems promising. But the European Union produces not much more than a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions. This share will shrink as time passes.

The European emissions trading scheme is an act of faith. By leading the way Europe hopes that more countries will follow its example.

But this will not happen if current discussions fail to lead to a global system that suits everybody.

More help with words

greenhouse effect

fossilised

fossil fuels

income

research


What's it all about?

1. What is the main conclusion of this set of articles?
2. What is the second conclusion?
3. How long is the European Union's emissions trading scheme set to last?
4. What was it designed to do?
5. The emissions trading scheme works, say the researchers. It does reduce the amount of carbon dioxide that companies are releasing into the atmosphere. How does it do that?
6. What percentage of the world's energy-related carbon dioxide emissions are produced by Europe?
7. Why did the European Commission have to make allowances scarce?
8. In how many countries were emissions greater than allowances?
9. How many countries are there in the EU?
10. So in how many countries were emissions less than or equal to allowances?
11. Name three countries that exceeded their allowed amount of emissions?
12. The writer suggests three methods that countries might have used to reduce their emissions. State two of them.
13. For one of your chosen methods explain in one sentence how it might work.
14. The writer says that allowances were greater than emissions for two reasons. Which of these means that the scheme was working?
15. Allowance prices were higher than the experts expected in the first year of trading. What is this evidence for?
16. This conclusion was drawn just from the price of the allowances. What other evidence did the researchers look at to see if the conclusion was correct?
17. How does the Commission plan to reduce emissions further?
18. The researchers conclude that the European emissions trading scheme is important for three reasons: It is big, many countries are taking part, and most important of all it -----.
19. State one reason that the European scheme is unlikely to be extended to cover the whole world.
20. Explain what the writer means when she says that the European emissions trading scheme is "an act of faith".
21. Is the conclusion of this article optimistic or pessimistic?
22. Explain your reasons for the answer you gave to the previous question.

What kind of story is this?
Learning to do science is about learning to think. Experiments, direct teaching, group activities and discussions all have a part to play. So do science news stories.

Like other non-fiction texts, science stories contain different kinds of statements. To get at the science behind the words - and to make reading them an active experience - students should pull a text apart and explore the kinds of statement it contains.

We've met some of these in the later questions of the previous activity. Science news stories usually include the aims of the research or reasons for doing it. They often contain a hypothesis. Sometimes evidence for a hypothesis is given, or a hypothesis is used to make a prediction. Towards the end of a story the direction of future research the scientists are planning is often discussed, as well as outstanding questions the research will be designed to answer.

All these types of statement occur in some science stories. Virtually all science stories, however, will contain statements of the following four types:

• new findings or developments;
• the technology and methods the scientists used;
• previous or accepted knowledge, which may or may not be supported by the new findings;
• issues, implications and applications of the research.

So the next activity is designed to engage students with the latest science news by exploring the meaning and structure of a story as revealed by the content and balance of these four statement types:

Pulling it apart
In groups students should read through the story looking for new findings or developments. Once they have reached agreement, or at least consensus, and have underlined all the statements about what the scientists have just discovered or achieved, they can compare and discuss.

In groups they should go through the story again looking for the technology and methods the scientists used in their research. Once they have reached agreement or consensus, and have underlined the statements that talk about the methods and equipment the scientists used, they can compare and discuss..

They should repeat the activity for existing knowledge.

Any areas of disagreement in these activities - whether among the students or between teacher and students - should be regarded as opportunities for discussion rather than errors to be corrected.

Having fully engaged with the latest science news through the above activities, students will be far better able to talk and think about the science and its implications than someone who has simply read about it in a newspaper or watched a brief item on television.

Now it's time for them to get to grips with the issues raised by the research.

Young people have opinions. But school science traditionally allowed little scope for forming and expressing these - which is why it turned many of them off the subject for life.

Putting it together again

In groups, students should read through the latest story looking for issues, implications and applications. Once they have reached agreement, or at least consensus, and have underlined all the relevant statements in the story, they can compare and discuss.

Having done all this the students are well armed to explore the issues raised by the story. A suggested discussion topic specific to this new story is provided below.

Topic for discussion, research or pupil presentations

A) One question this news story does not answer is exactly how the European Union emissions trading scheme works.

In groups students should research the EU emissions trading scheme, figure out how it works, and prepare presentations to explain this to the rest of the class.

The following questions can be used to focus their efforts if necessary, while research can concentrate on websites from the list below. Older, more experienced students may be set the task without one or both of these pieces of scaffolding.

Questions

1. How many countries are taking part?
2. Not all the companies in any country are included in the scheme. What type of companies
   are included?
3. What encourages a company to buy more allowances if it emits more carbon than it
   should?
4. The EU emissions trading scheme is of a type known as “cap and trade�. Explain what
   these two words mean when used in this way.
5. Why does this type of scheme work better than if companies are simply told by their
   government not to go above a certain level of emissions?
6. What kind of problems does a method like the EU emissions trading scheme suffer from?
7. How could these problems be solved in future?

Websites

Introductions to EU emissions trading scheme from:

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Worldwide Fund for Nature

Department for Trade and Industry

Environment Agency

BBC

B) Older students can try to answer a simple question to develop their ability to tackle news stories critically: The evaluation this story refers to claims the EU emissions trading scheme works: Does it really?

In groups students should take a look at opposing viewpoints expressed in for example, the following two websites, summarise the arguments for whether the scheme is a success or a failure, and decide which they find most convincing and why.

"Failed European Emissions Trading Scheme"

"The European Trading Scheme has had a rough ride."

Tips for science class discussions and groupwork

No 50
Preparation - the task
Make sure that the topic for discussion is clear, often framed as a question 'is wind energy the best power source for electricity?', 'should the government allow medical research on monkeys?'.

Preparation - information
Make sure that the participants all have sufficient information on the science involved, on the wider implications and on different arguments which might be used. It is often helpful to give students a few minutes to consider their position and prepare their arguments before the group discussion starts. A good 'warm up' with some groups is to then go round the class getting each student to express their views briefly, no discussion allowed at this stage.

From Science for Public Understanding

Encyclopaedia of Life

The Encyclopaedia of Life has just been launched. This is a global effort to create an online record of every known form of life on the planet - all 1.8 million species.

For the first time in the history of Earth, everyone will have instant internet access to all known living species. This includes species that have just been discovered.

"The Encyclopaedia of Life will provide valuable biodiversity and conservation information to anyone, anywhere, at any time," said Dr. James Edwards. He is named today as executive director of the Encyclopaedia of Life.

The Encyclopaedia will use the latest web technology for searching, annotating and visualising information. Over the next 10 years it will create internet pages for all 1.8 million known species. It will make it much easier to classify the millions of species still to be discovered.

The web pages will provide text, photographs, video, sound recordings, maps and other multimedia information on each species. These pages will be at www.eol.org

The Encyclopaedia will be a moderated wiki for scientists around the world. This means that many of them will be able to add text, images and other forms of knowledge. Then a group of experts will study what they have done and decide if it should be included.

The Encyclopaedia will be a vital tool for scientists, researchers and educators, says Jonathan F. Fanton, president of the MacArthur Foundation.

"Technology is allowing science to grasp the immense complexity of life on this planet. By sharing what we know we can protect Earth's biodiversity and better conserve our natural heritage."

Scientists have been cataloguing life for 250 years, said Ralph E. Gomory, president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. "But our traditional catalogues have become unwieldy."

The Encyclopaedia of Life will be almost unimaginably powerful, he added. "It will enable us to map and discover things so numerous or vast that they overwhelm our normal vision."

Scientists began creating web pages for species in the 1990s. But the internet had to mature first, before a fast, efficient and comprehensive Encyclopaedia could be created.

Encyclopaedia of Life efforts, including scanning key research journals, have been under way for over a year. But work accelerated recently because of a discussion of the Encyclopaedia of Life by eminent biologist Edward O. Wilson. This took place at the March 2007 Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) conference.

The professor emeritus at Harvard University "wished" for an Encyclopaedia of Life during his TED speech. He noted that "our knowledge of biodiversity is so incomplete that we are at risk of losing a great deal of it before it is ever discovered."

He called for a modern, dynamic portrait of the living Earth.

"I wish that we will work together to help create the key tool that we need to inspire preservation of Earth's biodiversity: the Encyclopaedia of Life," Wilson said at TED. "What excites me is that since I first put forward this idea, science has advanced, technology has moved forward.

"Today, the practicalities of making this encyclopaedia real are within reach as never before."

The Encyclopaedia of Life will give users the chance to personalise their learning through a "my eol" feature. The site will be written in all the main languages. It will connect scientists studying life from ants and apples to zebras.

The initial work will look at species of animals, plants and fungi. Microbes will be included later.

To provide depth behind the portal page for each species, the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) will scan and digitise tens of millions of pages of the scientific literature. Its scanning centres are already at work in London, Boston and Washington DC. It has scanned the first 1.25 million pages for the Encyclopaedia.

"I dream that in a few years wherever a reference to a species occurs on the internet, there will be a hyperlink to its page in the Encyclopaedia of Life," said Edwards.

9-May-2007

More help with words

microscopic

bacteria

virus

cell

fertile

individual

reproduce

breed

research

spores

What's it all about?

1. How many species of life are now known?
2. An encyclopaedia is a kind of book with lots of information in it. Is the Encyclopaedia of Life a book?
3. Who will be able to read and use the information in the Encyclopaedia of Life?
4. How will they be able to get at this information?
5. The latest web technology, the writer says, will be used to do three things with information about different species. What are those three things?
6. Choose one of these and explain in your own words what it means.
7. Once all the species we know about today are included in the Encyclopaedia, will the work be finished?
8. Which sentence in the story gave you the answer to the last question?
9. How long will it take before all the species we know about now are included in the Encyclopaedia?
10. The writer lists a number of different ways of presenting information. State three of these.
11. The new encyclopaedia is a wiki. What is a wiki?
12. What does it mean when a wiki is moderated?
13. By "traditional catalogues" the writer means big books containing lots of information about different species. What has made these become unwieldy?
14. This new encyclopaedia is different from these traditional catalogues because the information is online. Why does this mean it will not become unwieldy?
15. Web pages for some species have been around on the internet for a while. But these were not comprehensive. What does this mean?
16. Besides being comprehensive the new encyclopaedia will also be fast and efficient. What does this mean?
17. What reason did Professor Wilson give for wishing for an Encyclopaedia of Life?
18. In your own words what does "inspire preservation of Earth's biodiversity" mean?
19. Can you think of one thing that scientists or ordinary people with an interest in living things will be able to do with this new Encyclopaedia that they could not have done before?

Encyclopaedia of Life UK US

9-May-2007

Biology

What kind of story is this?
Learning to do science is about learning to think. Experiments, direct teaching, group activities and discussions all have a part to play. So do science news stories.

Like other non-fiction texts, science stories contain different kinds of statements. To get at the science behind the words - and to make reading them an active experience - students should pull a text apart and explore the kinds of statement it contains.

We've met some of these in the later questions of the previous activity. Science news stories usually include the aims of the research or reasons for doing it. They often contain a hypothesis. Sometimes evidence for a hypothesis is given, or a hypothesis is used to make a prediction. Towards the end of a story the direction of future research the scientists are planning is often discussed, as well as outstanding questions the research will be designed to answer.

All these types of statement occur in some science stories. Virtually all science stories, however, will contain statements of the following four types:

• new findings or developments;
• the technology and methods the scientists used;
• previous or accepted knowledge, which may or may not be supported by the new findings;
• issues, implications and applications of the research.

So the next activity is designed to engage students with the latest science news by exploring the meaning and structure of a story as revealed by the content and balance of these four statement types:

Pulling it apart

In groups students should read through the story looking for new findings or developments. Once they have reached agreement, or at least consensus, and have underlined all the statements about what the scientists have just discovered or achieved, they can compare and discuss.

In groups they should go through the story again looking for the technology and methods the scientists used in their research. Once they have reached agreement or consensus, and have underlined the statements that talk about the methods and equipment the scientists used, they can compare and discuss..

They should repeat the activity for existing knowledge.

Any areas of disagreement in these activities - whether among the students or between teacher and students - should be regarded as opportunities for discussion rather than errors to be corrected.

Having fully engaged with the latest science news through the above activities, students will be far better able to talk and think about the science and its implications than someone who has simply read about it in a newspaper or watched a brief item on television.

Now it's time for them to get to grips with the issues raised by the research.

Young people have opinions. But school science traditionally allowed little scope for forming and expressing these - which is why it turned many of them off the subject for life.

Putting it together again

In groups, students should read through the latest story looking for issues, implications and applications. Once they have reached agreement, or at least consensus, and have underlined all the relevant statements in the story, they can compare and discuss.

Having done all this the students are well armed to explore the issues raised by the story. A suggested discussion topic specific to this new story is provided below.

Topic for discussion, research or pupil presentations

The internet provides more opportunities than ever before for schoolchildren to tackle real science and communicate with real scientists, who are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of sharing their ideas and inspiration with young people.

The designers of the new Encyclopaedia of Life have raised a number of questions about their ambitious new project. They are:

1. How do we inspire the public to really participate in this initiative?
2. How do we ensure that underdeveloped countries, where many undiscovered species lie,
   get involved?
3. How do we persuade the many existing owners of valuable biological databases to get
   involved?
4. What are creative funding solutions?
   

In groups, pupils should choose two of these, brainstorm answers to them, and select the best three to present to the rest of the class in as much detail as possible.

The class should then select the best, and email them to the organisers at Encyclopedia of Life They might get no response, but you never know. And there is never any harm in trying to bring real science into the classroom.

Tips for science class discussions and groupwork

No 49

Many activities call for a formal class discussion and shorter discussions will happen all the time, as a summary to an activity, or because some interesting issue has been in the news. Not all discussion leads to learning, but the better managed and the clearer the objectives the more students will learn. They usually enjoy it whether
they learn or not and sometimes this is fine.

Ground rules

One option is for the teacher to provide a list of ground rules, and allow students to discuss the reasons for the rules. It is often better to get the students to agree their own list of ground rules so that they have 'ownership'. A
list might include the following points:

• listen
• don't interrupt
• respect other people's contributions and opinions
• allow others to contribute
  

Post the ground rules on the class notice board, and remind students about them before a discussion or as and when needed.

From Science for Public Understanding