When I’m sitting in my armchair, eating chocolate and finding it hard to motivate myself to exercise, a little voice in my head starts singing “You’ve got to move it, move it” to the tune of will.i.am’s “I like to move it”. The positive reinforcement and joy of this song as it plays on a loop in my mind propels me out of my seat and onto the tennis court.

Songs like this are earworms – catchy pieces of music that play on repeat in your head long after you’ve heard them. Some tunes are more likely to become earworms than others, and there are a few reasons for this.

To truly hook you in, the music must be repetitive so that the brain can easily finish it. Generally, it is also simple, and has a rising and falling pitch shape. While you need to hear a song several times for it to stick, once it’s wormed its way into your head, some lyrics become impossible to escape – “I just can’t get you out of my head”, as Kylie would say.

In his book Musicophilia, neurologist Oliver Sacks describes these internal music loops as “the brainworms that arrive unbidden and leave only on their own time”. They can fade away, but they tend to lie in wait, dormant until an association sets them off again – like when I need to exercise. But for me as a physics teacher for 16–18 year olds, this fact is more than just of passing interest: I use it in the classroom.

There are some common mistakes students make in physics, so I play songs in class that are linked (sometimes tenuously) to the syllabus to remind them to check their work. Before I continue, I should add that I’m not advocating rote learning without understanding – the explanation of the concept must always come first. But I have found the right earworm can be a great memory aid.

I’ve been a physics teacher for a while, and I’ll admit to a slight bias towards the music of the 1980s and 1990s. I play David Bowie’s “Changes” (which the students associate with the movie Shrek) when I ask the class to draw a graph, to remind them to check if they need to process – or change – the data before plotting. The catchy “Ch…ch…ch…changes” is now the irritating tune they hear when I look over their shoulders to check if they have found, for example, the sine values for Snell’s law, or the square root of tension if looking at the frequency of a stretched wire.

When describing how to verify the law of conservation of momentum, students frequently leave out the mechanism that makes the two trollies stick together after the collision. Naturally, this is an opportunity for me to play Roxy Music’s “Let’s stick together”.

Meanwhile, “Ice ice baby” by Vanilla Ice is obviously the perfect earworm for calculating the specific latent heat of fusion of ice, which is when students often drop parts of the equations because they forget that the ice both melts and changes temperature.

In the experiment where you charge a gold leaf electroscope by induction, pupils often fail to do the four steps in the correct order. I therefore play Shirley Bassey’s “Goldfinger” to remind pupils to earth the disc with their finger. Meanwhile, Spandau Ballet’s bold and dramatic “Gold” is reserved for Rutherford’s gold leaf experiment.

“Pump up the volume” by M|A|R|R|S or Ireland’s 1990 football song “Put ‘em under pressure” are obvious candidates for investigating Boyle’s law. I use “Jump around” by House of Pain when causing a current-carrying conductor in a magnetic field to experience a force.

Some people may think that linking musical lyrics and physics in this way is a waste of time. However, it also introduces some light-hearted humour into the classroom – and I find teenagers learn better with laughter. The students enjoy mocking my taste in music and coming up with suitable (more modern) songs, and we laugh together about the tenuous links I’ve made between lyrics and physics.

More importantly, this is how my memory works. I link phrases or lyrics to the important things I need to remember. Auditory information functions as a strong mnemonic. I am not saying that this works for everyone, but I have heard my students sing the lyrics to each other while studying in pairs or groups. I smile to myself as I circulate the room when I hear them saying phrases like, “No you forgot mass × specific latent heat – remember it’s ‘Ice, ice baby!’ ”.

On their last day of school – after two years of playing these tunes in class – I hold a quiz where I play a song and the students have to link it to the physics. It turns into a bit of a sing-along, with chocolate for prizes, and there are usually a few surprises in there too. Have a go yourself with the quiz below.

The post ‘Can’t get you out of my head’: using earworms to teach physics appeared first on Physics World.

Year 12 students (aged 16 or 17) often do work experience while studying for their A-levels. It can provide valuable insights into what the working world is like and showcase what potential career routes are available. And that’s exactly why I requested to do my week of work experience at the Institute of Physics (IOP).

I’m studying maths, chemistry and physics, with a particular interest in the latter. I’m hoping to study physics or chemical physics at university so was keen to find out how the subject can be applied to business, and get a better understanding of what I want to do in the future. The IOP was therefore a perfect placement for me and here are a few highlights of what I did.

Monday

My week at the IOP’s headquarters in London began with a brief introduction to the Institute with the head of science and innovation, Anne Crean, and Katherine Platt, manager for the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ). Platt, who planned and supervised my week of activities, then gave me a tour of the building and explained more about the IOP’s work, including how it aims to nurture upcoming physics innovation and projects, and give businesses and physicists resources and support.

My first task was working with Jenny Lovell, project manager in the science and innovation team. While helping her organize the latest round of the IOP’s medals and awards, she explained why the IOP honours the physics community in this way and described the different degrees of achievement that it recognizes.

Next I got to meet the IOP’s chief executive officer Tom Grinyer, and unexpectedly the president-elect Michele Dougherty, who is a space physicist at Imperial College London. They are both inspiring people, who gave me some great advice about how I might go about my future in physics.  They talked about the exciting opportunities available as a woman in physics, and how no matter where I start, I can go into many different sectors as the subject is so applicable.

To round off the day, I sat in a meeting about how the science and innovation team can increase engagement, before starting on a presentation I was due to make on Thursday about quantum physics and young people.

Tuesday

My second day began with a series of meetings. First up was the science and innovation team’s weekly stand-up meeting. I then attended a larger staff meeting with most of IOP’s employees, which proved informative and gave me a chance to see how different teams interact with each other. Next was the science and innovation managers’ meeting, where I took the minutes as they spoke.

I then met data science lead, Robert Cocking, who went through his work on data insights. He talked about IOP membership statistics in the UK and Ireland, as well as age and gender splits, and how he can do similar breakdowns for the different areas of special interest (such as quantum physics or astronomy). I found the statistics around the representation of girls in the physics community, specifically at A-level, particularly fascinating as it applies to me. Notably, although a lower percentage of girls take A-level physics compared to boys, a higher proportion of those girls go on to study it at university.

The day ended with some time to work on my presentation and research different universities and pathways I could take once I have finished my A-levels.

Wednesday

It was a steady start to Wednesday as I continued with my presentation and research with Platt’s help. Later in the morning, I attended a meeting with the public engagement team about Mimi’s Tiny Adventure, a children’s book written by Toby Shannon-Smith, public programmes manager at IOP, and illustrated by Pauline Gregory. The book, which is the third in the Mimi’s Adventures series, is part of the IOP’s Limit Less campaign to engage young people in physics, and will be published later this year to coincide with the IYQ. It was interesting to see how the IOP advertises physics to a younger audience and makes it more engaging for them.

Platt and I then had a video call with the Physics World team at IOP Publishing in Bristol, joining for their daily news meeting before having an in-depth chat with the editor-in-chief, Matin Durrani, and feature editors, Tushna Commissariat and Sarah Tesh. After giving me a brief introduction to the magazine, website and team structure, we discussed physics careers. It was good hear the editors’ insights as they cover a broad range of jobs in Physics World and all have a background in physics. It was particularly good to hear from Durrani as he studied chemical physics, which combines my three subjects and my passions.

Thursday

On Thursday I met David Curry, founder of Quantum Base Alpha – a start-up using quantum-inspired algorithms to solve issues facing humanity. We talked about physics in a business context, what he and his company do, and what he hopes for the future of quantum.

I then gave my presentation on “Why should young people care about quantum?”. I detailed the importance of quantum physics, the major things happening in the field and what it can become, as well as the careers quantum will offer in the future. I also discussed diversity and representation in the physics community, and how that is translated to what I see in everyday life, such as in my school and class. As a woman of colour going into science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), I think it is important for me to have conversations around diversity of both gender and race, and the combination of two. After my presentation, Curry gave me some feedback, and we discussed what I am aiming to do at university and beyond.

Friday

For my final day, I visited the University of Sussex, where I toured the campus with Curry’s daughter Kitty, an undergraduate student studying social sciences. I then met up again with Curry, who introduced me to Thomas Clarke, a PhD student in Sussex’s ion quantum technologies group. We went to the physics and maths building, where he explained the simple process of quantum computing to me, and the struggles they have implementing that on a larger scale.

Clarke then gave us a tour of the lab that he shares with other PhD students, and showed us his experiments, which consisted of multiple lasers that made up their trapped ion quantum computing platform. As we read off his oscilloscope attached to the laser system, it was interesting to hear that a lot of his work involved trial and error, and the visit helped me realize that I am probably more interested in the experimental side of physics rather than pure theory.

My work experience week at the IOP has been vital in helping me to understand how physics can be applied in both business and academia. Thanks to the IOP’s involvement in the IYQ, I now have a deeper understanding of quantum science and how it might one day be applied to almost every aspect of physics – including chemical physics – as the sector grows in interest and funding. It’s been an eye-opening week, and I’ve returned to school excited and better informed about my potential next career steps.

The post Beyond the classroom: a high-school student’s week at the Institute of Physics appeared first on Physics World.

Quantum science is enjoying a renaissance as nascent quantum computers emerge from the lab and quantum sensors are being used for practical applications.

As the technologies we use become more quantum in nature, it follows that everyone should have a basic understanding of quantum physics. To explore how quantum physics can be taught to the masses, I am joined by Arjan Dhawan, Aleks Kissinger and Bob Coecke – who are all based in the UK.

Coecke is chief scientist at Quantinuum – which develops quantum computing hardware and software. Kissinger is associate professor of quantum computing at the University of Oxford; and Dhawan is studying mathematics at the University of Durham.

Kissinger and Coecke have developed a way of teaching quantum physics using diagrams. In 2023, Oxford and Quantinuum joined forces to use the method in a pilot summer programme for 15 to 17 year-olds. Dhawan was one of their students.

• The books mentioned in the podcast are Picturing Quantum Processes: A First Course in Quantum Theory and Diagrammatic Reasoning by Bob Coecke and Aleks Kissinger; and Quantum in Pictures: A New Way to Understand the Quantum World by Bob Coecke and Stefano Gogioso.

The post Teaching quantum physics to everyone: pictures offer a new way of understanding appeared first on Physics World.