Fizeau, UK Astronomy, and the Physics Bowl

A team at the University of Mons has a paper in Physics Education in which they explain how they replicated an experiment to measure the speed of light using a low-power laser, a chopping wheel, and a couple historical buildings 8 km apart.

The print version of Physics World this month reports on a census of the UK astronomy community, also summarized here. Remarkably, their data suggest that the "leaky pipeline" in UK astronomy and geophysics is robust between undergraduate applicants and post-docs (30% and 40% are female, respectively, for those two fields).

This week's #iteachphysics chat was about remote robotics telescopes in astronomy education. There were lots of school astronomy resources and projects shared; two new to me were Solar Siblings and the CAPER.

If your students are still flipping water bottles, there's an excellent analysis by a team from the University Twente.

Registration for the (excellent!) AAPT Physics Bowl closes 26 February.

Seen on the web:
Seeker has another reason to see Black Panther.
Kelly O'Shea posted some great thoughts about why and how to do group-work.
Cody Gordon's students do an Atwood machine practical.
Ben Rogers has a new book about teaching the "big ideas" in physics.
The AMTA makes a cloud in a bottle.
Nathan Belcher's doing magnetic fields.
Frank Noschese has students find friction coefficients.

More next week!