Design and Technology in your School – the book you’ve all been waiting for!

You would expect me and Torben to be full of praise for a book that we’ve written. You can buy it from the publishers Routledge here. However, the foreword by Mary Myatt shows, we believe, that it is a work worthy of consideration and a place in all D&T departments.

Every so often you come across a piece of work which leaves you in awe of its scope, its fresh insights, and its deep humanity. It is no exaggeration to say that Design and Technology in Your School had this impact on my thinking. It is truly impressive in its scope, in its attention to detail, and in its call to arms for a truly thoughtful, intentional, and ambitious design & technology curriculum for every pupil. Jerome Bruner argued that ‘if a curriculum cannot change, move, perturb, inform teachers, it will have no effect on those whom they teach. It must be first and foremost a curriculum for teachers’. And it strikes me that this brilliant book by HildaRuth Beaumont and Torben Steeg provides exactly the kind of intellectual nourishment for Bruner’s ambition to be realised. Design and Technology in Your School makes a significant contribution to the curriculum canon in general and to design & technology in particular. In its scope, structure, and depth of the subject’s philosophy, purpose, and connection to other disciplines, it sets a high bar for other subjects. This is a truly impressive synthesis of design & technology’s aims, structures, controversies, and contribution to the human development of individuals and to society. For those involved in planning and teaching design & technology in schools, it is an absolute gift. 

This book is ambitious in its scope and intellectually satisfying in the detail, and stands as a model of how to interrogate the purpose and justify the inclusion of any subject within a school’s curriculum. Furthermore, it is grounded in the tough practicalities of planning the subject, delivering it to pupils and students, and capturing the myriad ways in which it might be assessed. The scope of design & technology ranges across how technology works to technology capability. Folded within these dual perspectives are a range of complex, beautiful ways of interacting with and shaping the constructs with which we navigate and enjoy and sometimes spoil our environments. What Beaumont and Steeg have managed to do is provide us with one of the most elegant, enjoyable, and truly thought-provoking insights into the beauty, the potential, and the dilemmas within the subject. It is structured in such a way that the reader is invited to become involved in the conversation. 

The structure for each chapter takes the reader on an intellectually satisfying journey of insights, provocations, and a ‘pause for thought’ with a stimulus for conversations with professionals and students: an invitation to enter into a scholarly conversation about the significance of the subject. These are balanced with scenarios and examples from the classroom. And then thought pieces within most chapters, standing in conversation with the substance of the main text. An ingenious way of both including a range of thought leaders in the field and of holding a space for respectful alternative views. Design and Technology in Your School manages to be both a panegyric, appreciated by a general audience on the one hand, and a practical guide for a specialist audience on the other. So, who needs to read this? I hope I’ve made the case that it’s for anyone with an interest in the curriculum in general, and for those concerned with the design and delivery of the Design & Technology curriculum in particular.

Mary Myatt is an education adviser, writer, and speaker. She trained as an RE teacher and is a former local authority adviser and inspector. She engages with pupils, teachers, and leaders about learning, leadership, and the curriculum. Mary has written extensively about leadership, school improvement and the curriculum. Her current work focuses on the Huh Curriculum series for primary, secondary, and SEND alongside the Huh Academy with John Tomsett. She has established Myatt & Co, an online platform with films for ongoing professional development, including the popular Primary Subject Networks and Secondary Subject Networks. Mary is a patron of CAPE, and is a member of the Cultural Education Plan Expert Advisory Panel. She has been a governor in three schools, and a trustee for a Multi Academy Trust. She maintains that there are no quick fixes, and that great outcomes for pupils are not achieved through tick boxes. 

As always comments welcome.

Nurturing 21st-Century Skills Through User-Centred Practices at Key Stage 3

When Hilda attended the PATT 40 Conference back in November she was fortunate enough to hear Phillip Jone’s presentation about the innovative work he was carrying out in in his school. Phil is a Head of Department at a school in Merseyside and has taught D&T in a range of schools for 11 years. He is a doctoral student under the supervision of Dr Matt McLain at Liverpool John Moores University. Immediately after the conference Hilda contacted Phil with the request that he write a guest blog about his work. This is the result and I’m sure you’ll be as impressed as Hilda was.

Against the backdrop of a knowledge-centric curriculum in England, Design and Technology (D&T) education emerges as a pivotal field, blending creativity, critical thinking, and empathy, equipping students with a rounded education that prepares them for the future. This interdisciplinary approach enhances students’ understanding of design principles but also prepares them for innovative problem-solving in various contexts, which will be essential for life and work in the future. D&T education encourages students to think beyond conventional boundaries by integrating aspects of design, technology, science, arts, and humanities. This broad perspective fosters a mindset of innovation and adaptability, essential for thriving in the 21^st Century. The focus on designing, making, and critiquing within D&T education cultivates essential skills for future success. With a documented focus within D&T on procedural knowledge and focused practical tasks that are masqueraded as design and make, it could be questioned how can D&T foster authentic problem-solving skills at Key Stage 3 that encompass the Big Ideas of D&T? This is particularly relevant following the successful shift towards the non-exam assessment (NEA) at Key Stage 4 and 5.

Exploring design process frameworks reveals a consensus on the iterative nature of design thinking. From Simon’s foundational models to the Design Council’s Double Diamond and IDEO’s Human-Centred Design models, these frameworks emphasise the dynamic, non-linear process of design, yet are seldom explored in their entirety at Key Stage 3 for various reasons. These models challenge students to engage in both divergent and convergent thinking, balancing creativity with critical evaluation, providing opportunities for students to explore a wide range of materials, processes, components, and systems, under the control of the teacher. The shift towards user-centred practices in design education more widely highlights the importance of empathy and co-creation. By emphasising understanding and integrating users’ perspectives, design education prepares students to tackle real-world challenges collaboratively and innovatively. This approach enhances design outcomes and cultivates empathy, a crucial skill for designers and a valuable trait for navigating social interactions and the workplace. Empathy, as a core attribute of design thinking, plays a significant role in developing successful design outcomes. Through direct engagement with end-users, students develop a deeper understanding of and connection with the people for whom they design. This leads to more effective solutions and enriches students’ learning experiences with respect and awareness of diverse perspectives.

In a quest to explore a way to embed a collaborative, user centred approach at Key Stage 3, the ‘Solving Genuine Problems for Authentic Users Project’ was born. 160 Year 8 pupils at an all-girls school in Merseyside have completed a 12-lesson collaborative unit of work centred around a design thinking methodology, requiring ongoing engagement with real end-users at the school and further afield. They work in randomly allocated teams of four to identify and solve a problem with an adult user. Examples of problems they have identified include:

• A way to dry glassware more quickly in the science department.
• A way to encourage pupils to use litter bins more often.
• A way to separate and transport examination papers from storage to the sports hall in all weathers (see photo below).
• A way to discourage pupils from putting dry ingredients in the fridge in food technology.
• A way to transport sets of headphones between classrooms without damaging them.

Students observe and interview their users to identify a problem they face. They use creative thinking techniques to generate around fifty different ideas between them and select a ‘daring’ idea to avoid stereotypical responses to the problem. Following card modelling and CAD, they manufacture a fully functional prototype as a team, much like the familiar NEA or coursework process in D&T, whilst returning to their end-user for feedback throughout the entire project.I call this Design Thinking Integrated Learning (DTIL) and I think it stands out as a constructivist methodology that promotes exploration and problem-solving. By aligning with key learning theories such as constructivism, social learning theory, and constructionism, DTIL enhances students’ creative confidence and adaptability. It provides a framework for active engagement with complex problems, fostering a practical application of knowledge in real-world scenarios, which is unique to D&T. A key tenet of this methodology is that teaching of subject matter occurs just-in-time, as opposed to just-in-case. As a result of this, each team of students will arrive at the end of the unit with different knowledge, however when this knowledge is viewed through the lens of the ‘Big Ideas in D&T’, each are able to group their knowledge and see how these fit into the bigger picture. For example, if one team used timber as the main material for a prototype, and another used polymers, then both will have explored material properties, sources, and sustainability, regardless of the medium they chose. As a second example, if an idea required an electronic system, then this could be explored with the teacher on a small-group basis, rather than to the entire class. One could argue that this method of teaching, whilst challenging, provides students with a more authentic experience of the design process, encouraging them to draw from a wide body of knowledge and skills. With the current focus on a knowledge-rich curriculum, it is imperative that pupils are aware of what they have learnt, despite this perhaps not being immediately obvious to them, therefore I am exploring how to formalise the process by asking learners to think about what they have learned during the task in terms of the Big Ideas that are important to D&T, so that they become aware of what they have learned in addition to what they have done.

One of the challenges that lies in this design thinking activity is in establishing learning goals and ensuring that each project can fulfil these requirements. A caveat to this sort of instruction is that a strong foundation of subject knowledge is required before students are ‘let loose’ on a constructivist project such as this. If pupils did not have an underpinning understanding of working safely and accurately, of systems, structures, CAD/CAM, etc. then a project such as this would be incredibly difficult to facilitate as students would be unable to link their ongoing work to prior knowledge. The somewhat unpredictable nature of such a project demands flexible teaching where there could be a number of entirely different projects carried out concurrently, much like at Key Stage 4, however completed at Key Stage 3 in teams instead, which is difficult to facilitate. This curriculum intervention forms a part of the school’s approach at Key Stage 3, taking around 15% of the entire KS3 D&T curriculum allocation, which includes cooking and nutrition.

D&T education is a critical component of a well-rounded education for the 21^st Century. By fostering a blend of creativity, critical thinking, and empathy, it prepares students to navigate and shape their futures successfully. This example of utilising DTIL demonstrates the potential that facilitating a collaborative constructivist approach can have on learning at Key Stage 3. Moving forward, the investigation will focus on users from outside of the school, for example an audiologist from a local hospital, a local day nursery, café, etc.

As always comments welcome.

.

Planned Obsolescence – an important concept in D&T

The significance of the filament bulb

Developed well over one hundred years ago and now phased out of use the filament bulb pays an interesting role in the development of planned obsolescence. In 1923 P J Brewer of British Thompson Hewson, a manufacturer of many different sorts of electrical goods including light bulbs, had the idea that sales of light bulbs could be increased by making them more efficient, they would glow more brightly and hence be attractive to customers but last for a shorter time, requiring customers to buy more bulbs. He shared this idea with other light bulb manufacturers, and this resulted in the formation of the Phoebus Cartel in 1924 in which manufacturers from across Europe agreed to limit the average life of a light bulb to 1000 hours. If a manufacturer produced bulbs that lasted longer that 1000 hours they would be fined by the Phoebus Cartel During life of the cartel, up to the beginning of WW2, the average life of a light bulb decreased from 2500 hours to 1000 hours. 

The idea gains ground

The activities of the Phoebus Cartel were secret, but the idea gained traction during the 1930’s in the USA. The idea was that in response to the Great Depression the economy could be revitalised if products had a shorter life. Hence new products could come onto the market as old ones broke down and this would maintain and increase spending, jump starting a devasted economy. Aldous Huxley was critical of this idea in his book Brave New World, a story about a dystopian state where people are indoctrinated to buy new stuff and discard the old. The government policy being summed up as “Every man woman and child is compelled to consume so much a year in the interests of industry. Ending is better the mending.”

Changing attitudes

I can remember from my own childhood in the 50’s and early 60’sthat there was an expectation that what was bought would last and that if it started to wear out or stop working then mending and repair was the order of the day. This applied to shoes, clothes, and electrical goods. Bu the 80’s and 90’s attitudes had changed; people had more money to spend, and consumerism was on the increase. Far fewer things were designed to last, and far more things designed and made with the expectation that they would be thrown away. And it is important to acknowledge the rise of what one might call psychological obsolescence, a desire for the new and the cool. Industrial designers Richard Semour and Dick Powell have also pointed to designing for visceral appeal: “I want it even before I know what it does or what it’s for”. However, some designers are advocating a reverse of this approach and Jack Holloway industrial design lead at Landor and Fitch argues that brands which don’t tackle planned obsolescence face becoming obsolete themselves, noting that we are seeing governments bringing in legislation that is mandating that products be designed with repairability in mind and shareholders that are becoming more environmentally aware and requiring companies to respond accordingly.

The problem of fast tech

Material focus is an organisation dedicated to making it easier for everyone across the UK to fix, donate and recycle their electrical goods and to stop precious resources from being lost forever. They make the analogy between the production, sale and disposal of electrical and electronic good to fast fashion, naming it fast tech. They have reported that in the UK half a billion fast tech items are bought a year with 90 % being thrown away within a year of being purchased which may be seen as a form of obsolescence embedded in the system. 

More than just a consumer issue

The argument that planned obsolescence is necessary to provide work for industry and goods for commerce is short sighted in that the result of planned obsolescence is that we are literally using up the Earth’s resources and in so doing causing irrevocable harm to the eco systems on which life on our planet depends.Clearly removing planned obsolescence is a strategy that supports moving to s circular economy.

Educating consumers

Tim Cooper, Emeritus Professor at Nottingham Trent University is clear that if we are to move to a society where products last longer many different stakeholders have a part to play – government, manufacturers, industry, retailers and consumers.  He carried out a survey with consumers about how satisfied they were with how long products lasted. To his surprise he found that the overwhelming majority said they were satisfied or very satisfied with how long consumer goods lasted. Consumers don’t expect products to last as long as they did in the past. This creates a problem for industry. Industrial designers know how to design products for longer life and repairability, but such products will inevitably be more expensive than current short life products. If consumers don’t expect or want this then companies that produce such products will fail. Tim argues that consumers need to be educated with regard to their responsibility. And as an advocate of our subject, I would argue that such education can start in the D&T classroom. Here is one suggestion.

Redesigning products to overcome planned obsolesence

The learners’ task is to consider a simple product and decide how it can be improved by thinking about how it might be manufactured, its durability, how it might be maintained and repaired, how it might be disposed of and its sustainability. This involves four steps

1 Make a careful sketch of your chosen product or take and print out a clear digital photograph. 

2 Place your sketch or photograph in the middle of an A2 sheet of plain paper and add notes concerning the following; 

1. The number of different parts;  

2. The shape of each part; 

3. The materials used for each part; 

4. The way the parts are held together; 

5. The use of ready-made components and fixings – screws, nuts and bolts, clips,  

6. How easy it is to take apart and rebuild; 

7. Parts which might break; 

8. Parts which rub together; 

9. Ways in which parts are protected from wear and tear; 

10. How easy it is to identify the materials used; 

11. How suitable the materials are for recycling. 

3 Use your notes to make suggestions changes to the design which would lead to the product being: 

1. Easier to manufacture; 

2. Easier to take apart;

3. More durable; 

4. Easier to repair and maintain; 

5. Easier to dispose of; 

6. More sustainable. 

4 Use the suggestions for improvements to produce a clear sketch of a new and improved design. 

More information can be found by listening to the radio programme Incandescent: The Phoebus Cartel presented by Shaun Keaveny.

As always comments are welcome, and I hope that members of the Maker Movement will send in their views as to how their advocacy of ownership and repairability challenges planned obsolescence.

Comments on the proposed KS3 programme of study Responsible design & innovation

There is no doubt that the school subject design & technology is in serious trouble. The proportion of young people studying GCSE Design & Technology fell by 50% from 2009 to 2020. If this trend continues the subject will just fade away over the coming few years until it is taken by just a small minority of young people. The Design & Technology Association acknowledge that as it stands design & technology is broken but believe it can be mended and have articulated this in terms of their ‘Reimagining D&T’ initiative. Phil Holton (Senior Strategy Manager for Pearson UK Schools) adopts a different position arguing that design & technology should be replaced by an alternative subject and to this end he has worked with the DfE to develop a new subject named Responsible design & innovation to be introduced into the National Curriculum at KS3 and made available as a GCSE subject. Phil has not done this on his own but has consulted with several hundred teachers as well as profession bodies such as the Design Council, Royal Society of Arts, Royal Academy of Engineering and academics in the field of design education. This post concerns the proposed Responsible design & innovation programmes of study for KS3 which Phil acknowledges is still very much a work in progress. 

Concerns about the title This reads as a subset of a larger endeavour hence I wonder if the proposal, needs to be wider with regard to the required nature of a school subject. A school subject might well include responsible design and Innovation as a key epistemic value but would need to have a wider subject matter remit which is reflected in its title and in the subject content.

Understanding a circular economy This is given prominence as an idea in the proposal and as such is to be welcomed but the level of detail in which this should be taught at KS3 needs to be clarified as the three basic principles and the related biological and technical cycles contain many concepts that are difficult to comprehend and to some extent counterintuitive. 

Having to know too much about manufacturing One of the issues that has been discussed in the consultations has been the need to teach young people too much content. An example quoted to me by Phil was that of casting. One would want learners to appreciate that the casting process can be used to manufacture various items from various materials, but they didn’t need to know the details of how to cast with particular materials. So, in developing a prototype solution from easy to work materials learners would indicate which parts might be cast and from what material but would not be required to carry out the casting or know about it in depth. I have some sympathy with this process but would want young people to have some formative experiences of manufacturing processes, so they have a clear conceptual grasp on what is involved. Casting of various types always involves and putting a liquid into a 3D void which is in the form of the desired item. This can be experienced by learners using low temperature melting alloys and silicon moulds giving, for example, Dungeon and Dragons figures. That, or a similar hands-on experience, is vital if learners are to understand what casting involves. Hence it will be important for the PoS to identify a range of ‘this is how I would manufacture my prototype’ processes suitable for KS3 and for teachers to develop ways of giving formative experiences of these that enable learners to indicate clearly how their prototype proposal might be manufactured.

Insufficient technical content? I do think there is technical content that needs to be taught if learners are to develop prototypes that indicate how their proposal will actually work. So, the identification of content concerned with achieving functionality is important and at the moment this seems to be missing. So, something specific about how artefacts of various sorts might be powered, controlled and structured needs to be included. Not huge amounts but enough to put meeting these functionality requirements on the agenda and enough that enable learners to find out more for themselves should they need to do so. if learners know a small amount about a knowledge domain it is much easier for them to find out more than if they are starting from knowing nothing or almost nothing.

Too much D not enough T? There is no doubt that the proposal give prominence to design. I wonder if it gives too much prominence at the expense of considering technology. Designing operates through the implementation of various technologies (plural) and these are all subject to the intrinsic nature of technology (singular). The sorts of technologies that have significant impact on our society and are likely to be useful in tackling the problems facing us are often disruptive technologies and the nature of these has been clarified by McKinsey. In brief these are:

• They upset the status quo, for example overturning existing hierarchies and offering the possibilities of both more and less democratic hierarchies. 
• They alter the way people live and work, for example increasing or decreasing employment opportunities, changing the knowledge and skills required for certain kinds of employment, shifting the expectations of education systems and altering relationships 
• They reorganise financial and social structures, for example by redistributing financial rewards towards those who are deploying these technologies. 
• They lead to entirely new products and services.

It’s relatively easy to identify a set of technologies that currently meet these crtiteria: Additive Manufacture, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Big Data, the Internet of Things, Neurotechnology, Programmable Matter, Robotics, Synthetic Biology. And as others emerge they could be added to the PoS.  It would be useful to see this acknowledged inthe proposal. 

Technology singular has been criticised by some philosophers as being intrinsically ‘inhumane’ with is emphasis on systematisation and efficiency (C S Lewis and Jacques Ellul), being outside human control, almost with a will of its own (Kevin Kelly) and embedded in a Trinitarian relationship with science and capitalism in which the possibility of making large amounts of money is the ultimate deciding factor in which technologies are developed and utilised. There are some counter voices to this (Tim O’Reilly) and particularly Shannon Vallor. Vallor identifies 12 technology virtues which could mitigate to a large extent the negative impacts of the intrinsic nature of technology. These are:

• Honesty
• Self-control
• Humility
• Justice
• Courage
• Empathy
• Care
• Civility
• Flexibility
• Perspective
• Magnanimity
• Wisdom

Each is derived from much older Aristotelian, Confucian and Buddhist ethical traditions. If, as I think is necessary, technology and technologies achieve a greater prominence in the proposal then some consideration of these virtues might pay dividends.

Wider reading required There is a growing literature concerned with technology education that deals with the nature of technology and how this might be considered in school technology or design & technology courses. The Springer Contemporary Issues in Technology Education series is particularly noteworthy and it is important that Phil and his advisers engage with this literature.

Prototyping as modelling? I wonder if the term model might be preferable to the term prototype. The whole of digital and physical prototyping may be seen in terms of modelling with the various models being developed to provide ever increasing levels of detail as the design idea is clarified to the point of being able to be realised as a working prototype. The various forms of models (and modelling) are chosen with regard to the clarification required and do not necessarily move in a sequence of simple 2D through to complex 3D. Models need to be useful for the task in hand (resolving a particular detail) as opposed to being completely accurate. So, it’s worth indicating what needs to be clarified and the sorts of model that might be appropriate. A starter list could be: overall external appearance, detailed external appearance, handling properties, internal details, functional component details and arrangements, functional behaviour, sensory appeal etc. The models to clarify such features may be digital or physical. Also, it might be worth aligning the modelling with the sorts of design decisions that learners will be required to make – conceptual, technical; aesthetic, manufacturing, stakeholder requirements.

There is more that I could write but given that the proposal is still a work in progress I think I’ve written enough. There is no doubt that Phil’s efforts in working with a range of stakeholders, including teachers, and the DfE are providing a long overdue wake up call to all those interested in the future of design & technology as a school subject in whatever guise it ultimately manifests itself.

As always comments welcome.

A book for chemistry teachers

Lessons in chemistry by Bonnie Garmus is a brilliant read from many perspectives; an engrossing tale of the discrimination suffered by women in science, an unlikely love story, the trials of motherhood, a critique of primary education, the power of friendship, the chemistry of cookery and its impact on women’s liberation! A gripping novel challenging the status quo through analogies with chemistry. Here is a wonderful extract in which the heroine Elizabeth Zott talks to the audience of her TV cookery show, Supper at Six, about bonding.

Today we are going to study three different types of chemical bonds: ionic, covalent and hydrogen. Why learn about bonds? Because when you do you will grasp the very foundation of life. Plus your cake will rise. Ionic is the ‘opposites attract’ chemical bond. For instance, let’s say you wrote your PhD thesis on free market economics but your husband rotates tyres for a living. You love each other but he’s probably not interested in hearing about the invisible hand. And who can blame him because you know the invisible hand is libertarian garbage. The point is that you and your husband are completely different and yet you still have a strong connection. That’s fine. It’s also ionic. Or perhaps your marriage is more of a covalent bond. And if so, luck you, because that means you both have strengths that, when combined, create something even better. For example, when we combine hydrogen and oxygen, what do we get? Water or H₂O as it’s more commonly known. In many respects a covalent bond is not unlike a party – one that’s made better thanks to the pie you made and the wine he brought. … That brings us to the third bond, the hydrogen bond – the most fragile and delicate bond of all. I call this the ‘love at first sight’ bond because both parties are drawn to each other based solely on visual information: you like his smile; he likes your hair. But then you talk and discover he’s a closet Nazi and thinks women complain too much. Poof. Just like that the bond is broken. That’s the hydrogen bond for you ladies – a chemical reminder that if things seem too good to be true, they probably are. … “See?” a woman in Santa Monica demanded as she turned to her sullen seventeen-year-old daughter, the girl’s eye liner so thick, it looked as if planes could land there. “What did I tell you? Your bond with that boy is hydrogen only. When are you going to wake up and smell the ions?” “Not that again” “You could go to college. You could be something.” “He loves me!” “He’s holding you back.”

I used to be a chemistry teacher and I find that piece inspirational. I dabbled similarly writing the following piece about the reactivity series of metals reconfigured as ‘The true-life confessions of an electron – a tale where the characters are moved by forces they can’t control.’

I started life with magnesium. Oh, they warned me, my old aunts (the inert gases). “He’s frightfully reactive, you know. As soon as he can he’ll pass you on to somebody else. He always gets rid of his electrons.” But I didn’t care, I was young and so attracted to him. Besides they were only jealous. They hadn’t lived at all – the odd phase change in the low temperature research labs was the only experience they had ever had. I think I knew all along that it couldn’t last. He would gaze broodingly at passing ions. It was during one of these dark moods that we bumped into Pb²⁺ (aq). Oh! The pain and heartache. In an instant he just handed me over. Then he was gone, completely changed, dancing off with a crown of adoring water molecules all clustering around him. I thought I’d die, but gradually I overcame the heartbreak. Auntie Neon was kind – nothing ever happened when we bumped into her. She told me, on one side, that Pb was a much more stable chap, far less likely to give me up. I was lucky to be part of his family circle of electrons. A word of warning though – keep clear of the blue light district where Cu²⁺ (aq) hangs out: he’d accept electrons from almost anybody and would make an offer even my own Pb couldn’t refuse.  We were happy and content, it seemed that nothing could disturb us. We went to parties and took part in the gay social whirl. We even bumped into my old ex, now Mg²⁺ (aq) – not the slightest frisson, he seemed completely uninterested. Yes, I was a fool to think it could las forever. It was on the way home from a meeting of the Ancient Order of Plumbers (we’re always invited to their ‘do’s’), that it happened. We took a short cut. It all seemed rather narrow and dark. I started to get worried when we almost ran into a halide ion that hissed something about ‘buying dirty Periodic Tables’. We hurried past, around a corner and it was then we collided with Cu²⁺ (aq). In a flash Pb handed me over. I just couldn’t believe my eyes. He changed completely, lurched off with a crowd of water molecules only to fall into the clutches of two chloride on floozies. I can tell you they wasted no time in getting their hooks into him, just dragged him down to become part of a waiting giant structure. There was no escape. I was firmly held …

I concluded the piece with these questions:

1. Write down the equations for the electron transfer reactions that are described in the story.
2. Write down the equation for the precipitation reaction described in the story.
3. Your chance to become a romantic novelist. Write a continuation if the story – The further adventure of Lizzy Lectron. Will she ever find an atom that keeps her?

In the light of woke awareness concerning the variability of gender identity and sexuality I now need to write the last part of Question 3 as ‘Will she/he/they ever find an atom that keeps them?’

If possible I think it would be good for D&T teachers to talk with their chemistry teacher colleagues about this piece as a starting point for looking at links between the two subjects especially as the reactivity of metals often causes problems in the environment, is important in the construction of rechargeable batteries plus metals are intriguing construction materials in their own right..

As always comments welcome

A liquid that acts like a sponge – you must be joking!

In a literal sense, we live in a material world. Our made world is constructed from and uses a vast range of different materials in ever more ingenious combinations. Some are natural, some are synthetic, some we have used for centuries, others are ‘new kids on the block’. The advent of a new type of material is particularly interesting to those of us who teach science or design & technology and liquid sponges fall into that category. Not only are liquid sponges a new type of material their behaviour is highly counterintuitive. It is relatively easy to understand the behaviour of a solid sponge – a flexible material, highly porous because its structure contains lots of holes each of which can hold small quantities of liquid. When the sponge is squeezed the air in the holes is pushed out and on release liquid is drawn into the holes. So, sponges can be used to mop up spilled liquids. But a liquid sponge? Liquids are incompressible, composed of a maelstrom of molecules, tightly packed together, tumbling over one another. To be sure there are small spaces between the molecules, holes if you like, but they are forever moving and changing places. How can they possibly soak anything up? 

Enter Stuart James who started with a solid material with a cage like structure giving it holes and simply melted it to give, he hoped, a liquid which still retained the cages and would have holes. But it didn’t work out. Then he tried dissolving the solid in a solvent to give a solution but that didn’t work because the solvent molecules filled up all the holes. Eventually he tried a different sort of material with a cage structure and a different solvent whose molecules were too big to go into the holes and voilà he had prepared the first ever liquid sponge or, as they are usually called, porous liquids. Jarad Mason developed the idea further by developing materials with a cage like structure that dissolved in water but had cages that were water repellent. This meant the holes didn’t get filled up with the water that was being used to dissolve the material. These sorts of materials are biocompatible which means they could be used in humans to, for example, oxygenate their blood if they are having breathing difficulties. 

Katherine Sanderson writes about this beautifully in the latest edition of New Scientist (The unlikely rise of liquid sponges 11 March 2023) explaining in everyday language (doughnuts, spaghetti and dinner plates) just how they work. Do read her article. Importantly these remarkable materials are of more than academic interest. Here are just some of the possible uses as indicated in Katherine’s piece.

Capturing Carbon Carbon-capture-and-storage technology is used to try to sequester greenhouse gases produced at fossil fuel power plants and other high emitting industries, such as steelworks. Porous liquids could be a cheaper, more efficient way of soaking up the carbon dioxide than the current technology.

Purifying Crude Oil The process of separating crude oil into all its components – natural gas, petrol, bitumen and more – currently relies heavily on distillation which requires a huge amount of energy to heat up the mixture. Porous liquids could be an alternative, lower-energy separation technology. 

Harvesting Xenon  Xenon is a rare gas used in physics experiments as an anaesthetic and in lights. We currently obtain it by liquefying air and then distilling it, an energy-intensive process. Porous liquids could be used to separate xenon from nuclear waste instead.

Katherine’s piece would make an excellent reading homework for learners in KS4 and the basis for a technological perspective reader.

As always comments welcome

The rise of cultivated meat

Recently I was looking forward to a visit from a new friend. She was coming to stay with me, and, apart from one or two meals out, I was going to cook for us during her stay. As I was waiting for her train to arrive, she texted me with the message, “You haven’t forgotten that I’m Vegan, have you?” I had! As it turned out I had enough vegetables to pull together a decent Vegan sauce to accompany some pasta and we were able to shop locally to buy more Vegan fare and find some Vegan cafés, so disaster was averted. My friend is committed to being a Vegan on the grounds that she believes eating meat will inevitably involve cruelty to animals as well as contributing to global warming.

I can see her arguments but really enjoy eating meat. Hence I was delighted to find an article on the BBC News website entitled Eating chicken without killing chicken? This short video clip introduces the work of Upside foods and the science section of their site gives a clear overview of how the process takes place.

The really good news is that the US Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) has concluded that the chicken meat produced by Upside Foods is safe to eat and could appear in restaurants this year and in supermarkets in 2028.

The advantages of producing meat in this way over conventional chicken farming are considerable:

For animal welfare

The cells from a single chicken allow the cultivation of the same amount of poultry that ordinarily would come from hundreds of thousands of traditionally farmed birds.

For the environment

At scale, Upside Foods project that cultivated meat will use 77% less water and 62% less land than conventional meat. Uside Foods expect these numbers to get better over time and currently use 100% renewable energy at its production factory

For humanity

The meat is cultivated in a clean, contamination free facility. By reducing the number of animals raised and processes the susceptibility of humans to animal-borne diseases is decreased.

So, might cruelty free meat eating be just around the corner?

As always comments welcome

A great read for you and a brilliant holiday homework for Y9 or Y10

Science fiction novels about climate change tend to be dystopian – all doom and gloom with humanity either eking out an existence in a distinctly unfriendly natural environment or hunkering down in bio-domed cities occupied with fighting internal tribal battles. This is definitely not the case in Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry of the Future which centres on the work of a fictional U.N. agency charged with solving climate change. The book combines science, politics, and economics to present a credible best-case scenario for the next few decades. It’s simultaneously heartening and harrowing. By the end of the story, 2053, carbon levels in the atmosphere have begun to decline. Yet hundreds of millions of people have died or been displaced. Coastlines have been drowned and landscapes have burned. Economies have been disrupted, refugees have flooded the temperate latitudes, and ecoterrorists from stricken countries have launched campaigns of climate revenge. So, a white knuckle ride of can we, can’t we, will we, won’t we attempts of the UN Ministry of the Future’s efforts to secure a carbon neutral future for the planet and all its inhabitants.  Within the text there are occasional glimpses of the sort of technology that might emerge and I found this description of an ocean liner operating completely on renewable energy particularly intriguing.

The ocean clipper, sleek, seven-masted, looking like a cross between a schooner and a rocket ship on its side. … Every surface of the ship was photo-voltaic or piezoelectric or both. Its passage through the waves, its very existence in the sun, generated power which got sent to the props. With a good wind filling the big sails, and the kites pulling from far overhead, tethered to the bow, they could fly on the things hydroplanes. A hundred kilometres an hour felt really fast. She stood o the taffrail f the seven-masted schooner, a craft that could maybe be sailed solo or by the ship’s AI. AI design was continuously working up better ships, as with everything, and solutions were sometimes counterintuitive as could be (kites? masts curving forward?) …

So, the holiday task for years 9 and 10 might be as follows: 

Read the passage about the ship of the future.

Check out the meaning of any words you don’t understand. You may want to collect pictures of some of the words. This will enable you to start to imagine in your mind’s eye, what this ship might look like. To help your imagination draw a very rough sketch of what it might look like. Look at your sketch and think about how it might be improved. Do this three or four times so that you have a sequence of sketches finishing with one that you think really shows what the ship might look like. Now arrange your sketches in the sequence in which you drew them so that you can see how your idea of the ship has improved as you were able to take an idea, sketch it, put it back inside your head and improve it and sketch it again; and again; and again!

As your D&T teacher I am really looking forward to seeing your ideas of this ship of the future!

As always comments welcome

Frank and Hilda blow their own trumpets

Many moons ago Frank Banks and Hilda Beaumont (then David Barlex) collaborated on the DEPTH Project. This considered how pre-service and in post D&T teachers might reflect on their personal subject construct using this simple graphic to focus attention on three important features: subject knowledge, pedagogic knowledge and school knowledge; which they christened know your stuff, know how to teach your stuff and know how to teach your stuff in your school.

Dr David Gill at the Memorial University of Newfoundland is responsible for training technology teachers and as part of the current programme he requires the pre-service teachers to interview folk whose research is relevant to their teaching and development as teachers. David chose me and Frank to be interviewed about our work on the DEPTH Project. Eric Power and Jacob Walsh conducted the interview using questions provided by themselves and their classmates. You can see the result here

Brief bios of Frank and Hilda are here

The interview is here

The resources referred to in the interview are here

Frank and I felt privileged to have been chosen as worthwhile interviewees and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. We think that other pre-service teachers and their tutors might find watching the interview worthwhile. We hope so.

As always comments welcome