The weeks to Term 4 have flown and in the Science department seniors have left for exams after another successful year, juniors students approaching exams, competitions have been won, the tadpoles are growing, paramecium are growing happily in their bowl, there are beans in the glasshouse and summer is on the way.

On the 8th of November, I went to see Professor Brian Cox in his live show about Cosmology. It was a great talk, stimulating, had spectacular graphics. It will take a long time for me to fully digest but I’m sure that it will add to my teaching and keep popping up in areas that I can’t yet predict but it has already expanded my understanding of life and it’s place in the cosmos. Professor Cox is also keen to keep group-breaking science to the fore and explained the significance of this years Nobel Prize in Physics (To Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Kip Thorne "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves".) and its connection to relativity as well as explains how it related to the creation of and presence of gold in the universe.

Mention of the Nobel Prize reminds me to draw attention to the Ig-Nobel Prizes as well. The Ig Nobel Prizes honour achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honour the imaginative — and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology.

The prizes are awarded to published research, for example, the 2017 PHYSICS PRIZE went to— Marc-Antoine Fardin, for using fluid dynamics to probe the question "Can a Cat Be Both a Solid and a Liquid?" the rest follow a similar vein and are well worth a look at https://www.improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2017.