Dear Gosford City Learning Community,
Thank you all again for the privilege of letting me share my enthusiasm for #STEM, optimism for the future and appreciation for Australia’s free public education system with you as we prepare to launch into Term 3, 2016.
Wishing you all a very happy and fantastically productive Education Week, Book Week, National Science Week.
Keep smiling and bye for now,
Ruben
Introduction and demonstrations
Droids, Drones and Robots National Science Week 2016
Bulldozer production line Red Viking Engineering
Robotic forklifts (Automatic Guided Vehicles) NDC Automation
Blue Horizon Rocket video of third flight on 2 April 2016
Curiosity Show YouTube Channel
Reminisce with Prof Julius Sumner Miller
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures®
When you lose weight where does the fat go? my paper published in The BMJ on 16 Dec 2014 (open access, free to download)
The mathematics of weight loss TEDx Talk my first attempt at explaining where the mass goes when you lose weight
Big Fat Myths Ebury Books in bookstores this September
Brian Schmidt donates $100k of his Nobel Prize money to Primary Connections
Optimism #1 – MORE PEACEFUL
The Better Angels of Our Nature the book by Professor Steven Pinker (2011)
Steven Pinker’s 2015 Nobel Peace Forum Presentation with updates on some of the recent calamities
The surprising decline in violence Steven Pinker’s 20min TED Talk
Steven Pinker: A History of Violence 37min talk at the Singularity Summit
Violence Vanquished essay featuring the two graphs in my slides
The News: A User’s Manual Allain de Botton’s timely book about how to consume the news
Optimism #2 – SMARTER: The Flynn Effect
The Mean IQ of Americans: Massive Gains 1932 to 1978 James Flynn (1984) Psychological Bulletin Vol. 95 No. 1
The Flynn Effect summary of the hypotheses by Indiana University’s Dr Jonathan Plucker
Why our IQ levels are higher than our grandparents’ Prof James Flynn’s TED Talk
Optimism #3 – NICER: The Bystander Effect
“The bystander-effect: A meta-analytic review on bystander intervention in dangerous and non-dangerous emergencies.” Fischer, P. et al. (2011) Psychological bulletin Vol. 137 No.4 *subscription required
Bystander Effect YouTube video (3min 35sec)
The Murder of Kitty Genovese Wikipedia page with good citations to further reading
Optimism #4 – RICHER
Retail Traded (Australian Bureau of Statistics) Lots of delicious data
Nail salons and massage parlours the new growth industries Weekend Financial Review article
Tattoos Catalyst story about the science of tattoos and tattoo removal
Optimism #5 – HEALTHIER
Life expectancy trends Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
Control, elimination, eradication and re-emergence of infectious diseases: getting the message right 2006 WHO Bulletin editorial
Hans Rossling’s TED Talks amazing public health statistics
Optimism #6 – TECHNOLOGY: Better, faster, cheaper
Laser danger the danger of high powered laser pointers
Pop a balloon inside a balloon with a magnifying glass
Lasers in Medicine International Society for Optics and Photonics Open access article
Optimism #7 – SCIENCE: Unsolved Mysteries
Here are just a few of Nature’s puzzles that are yet to be solved:
The Millennium Problems The Clay Mathematics Institute’s unsolved problems with a $1,000,000 prize
What is dark matter and dark energy? Cosmos Magazine article
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks A thought-provoking book about cancer, ethics and why we die by Rebecca Skloot
Why do we sleep? BBC Article (18 March 2016)
Where is all the antimatter? ABC Science Online (23 June 2016)
The story of antimatter CERN Timelines