A joint project by the Nuffield Curriculum Centre and the Institute of Physics, the site is aimed at “teachers and technicians who wish to develop their practical craft in physics”.

Well-tested experiments are described in sufficient detail for teachers to make them work in a school laboratory. Topics in the new set include reflection, refraction, the eye, and spectra and colour: “Ask students what Newton, a very good scientist, did as his next experiment. The splitting up of light into colours was a delight... But it was an act of scientific genius to pierce a hole in the card on which he caught the spectrum, and try a second prism with the light of one colour... ”

Practical physics now contains close to 500 experiments.

* www.practicalphysics.org