Presentation by Dom Oram, Yr 13

This morning we were lucky enough to be treated to a presentation by sixth former, Dom Oram. He has developed his own software to re-create the complicated effects of Gravity in a planetary system.



Dom originally wrote the program in Visual-basic when he was a GCSE astronomy student a few years ago. However, since then he has changed the programing language to C++, since the original language was not powerful enough for the things he wanted it to do. He wanted the program to be able to show, not only how different masses affected a planetary system, but also wanted it to show light, colour and texture of the planets.





Over time, Dom has also added background stars and effects to show heat emitted from the planet. As well as this, if you click on any planetary body in the system, you are able to move down to ground level, and see what you would see from there in the sky (eg the sun rising and setting & it getting correspondingly lighter and darker.)







Dom's presentation captured the imagination of his audience, and they were able to ask interesting questions at the end about the program, and how Dom planned to develop it into the future. Dom will be studying physics at (Durham ?) University in September, and plans to combine it with a programming course to help him develop his project further.



From Heathfield Community college, we were delighted to welcome sixth formers (pictured below) Joe Benians, Toby Crisford and Nathan Masters, as well as their physics teacher Ms Waddington; and Mr Howard (not in picture), who will be head of 6th form in Heathfield from September. They stayed on afterwards to carry out some physics experiments after Dom's presentation.



We also welcomed Mr Clive Oram, Dom's proud father, who thorougly enjoyed the presentation.

Also watching the presentation were most of Yr12 physics groups and a few staff who missed Dom's first presentation on 21st April 2010.


Dom Oram (badge winner)

Space and the Philosophy of Religion

We’re about to study cosmological arguments for the existence of God in A-level and GCSE Philosophy of Religion.

This includes evaluating cosmic Red Shift and Background Radiation alongside philosophical arguments for a First Cause to discuss whether belief in a supreme being is coherent with the scientific method.

At A level we go more deeply into the philosophical foundations of the scientific method, and touch on the anthropic principle and multiverse theory.

It intrigues many of our students that NASA persists in referring to the Big Bang as a hypothesis (because most of them have been conditioned to regard it as proven fact), and it also stretches their minds to discover that the levels of mass, density and gravity needed to make the model work are almost as irrational as any creation myth!

-J. Bailey

Attack of the Space Junk

News-breaking story

According to inside sources, we humans are being 'scrutinised and studied' by 'intelligences greater than mankind's'. The aliens are so intelligent they have apparently not only worked out how to make teapots fly, but discovered that painting them red makes their fleet a spectacular sight as it travels through space!



Jon Yardley and his kidnapped scientist team were so fascinated by what they were shown, they felt they had to alert the rest of mankind. With great difficulty and danger to themselves they are somehow managing to obtain copies of the aliens' records at Teapots from Space and are secretly sending the videos to Earth using a special code as yet undeciphered by the aliens .

If you want to get a clue of what these tea-drinking aliens are uncovering about the human race and space you can watch this growing series of Videos on YouTube as they are deciphered back into Earth-speak (If you can't view in school due to the firewall settings, come back and try the above link at home!)

The first episode of 'Teapots from Space' is all about space junk, a seriously dastardly problem (watch out for that oil can!):

"How much space junk is there and how did it get into space?
Watch the space teapots and teapot abducted astronomers
talk about space junk and space telescopes."

For those who prefer to listen on your ipods, Edward Gomez has cleverly put the program into podcast form, which can be found by searching itunes for 'TeaPots from Space'.

Teapots from Space follows the visits of the Space Teapots.
These curious aliens borrow astronomers and other scientists
from Earth to find out more about mankind, their
technological advances and preference for cake or biscuits.