WEAR asks us to investigate the issues of the fashion industry. Are we too wasteful, throwing clothes away once they've been worn a few times? Do we care who's making our clothing and how much they're being paid? How does our clothing represent who we are and what we have to say?

What if we could all...

CK's job is helping people under the impact of the conflict ongoing in Yemen. In Yemen, he is managing a water and sewer programme which requires lots of engineering skill and also project management skill.

Practical Action helps local communities in the developing world gain access to services such as water and sanitation, vital for a decent quality of life. Some examples of how they go about doing this and the technologies involved are demonstrated in these videos:

• Dying for a drink - solar powered...

This video introduces Nariba, a graduate water engineer for engineering company Halcrow. Nariba performs assessments for construction projects, focusing on flood risk management. Her work includes water management, drainage, flooding, water quality issues, flood risk management and flood defences.

She...

Act 1

A video is shown of an octagonal water tank being...

A measuring cylinder is shown with divisions marked in millilitres. Water is poured at a constant rate into the cylinder. The challenge is to graph the volume of water against time. The resulting graph is linear.

Water volume video

This resource, from Siemens UK, encourages students to appreciate the importance of clean water and the problems that may arise in the absence of it. Students consider soluble and insoluble pollutants and methods of filtration. They then explore contamination by microorganisms, water-borne diseases and the...

Comparing two sine waves of different amplitudes, this video shows that the intensity of a wave is proportional to the square of the amplitude.  The intensity is given I = ^P/_A, i.e., power per cross-sectional area.

In this video, Alom Shaha describes a simple but effective wave machine. Aimed at teachers, this video explains how to make the wave machine using adhesive tape, jelly babies and wooden skewers. He explains how it can be used to illustrate transverse wave motion in a visual and engaging manner.

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This video summarises the properties of waves, i.e., reflection, refraction, diffraction and polarisation using a free App called Ripple free by Paul Falstad.  The App is very effective and versatile. 

This video uses a jelly baby wave machine to introduce the motional properties of progressive and standing waves and to introduce key terminology.

A displacement – distance graph is used to define wavelength (λ) and the phase of a wave.  A complete wave cycle is 360⁰ and from this the position of a particle...

This video explains the observations when two coherent light waves interact to form fringes.  A diagram is used to show that

λ = ^(ax)/_d, where a = slit separation and D = the distance between the slit and the projection screen, and x = distance between fringes. From these measurements...

This video introduces explains the difference between the phase difference of a wave (measured in degrees) and the path difference of a wave (measured in metres of fraction of a wavelength). 

When waves are coherent and have a path difference that is a multiple of λ, then the interference is constructive. ...

This video begins by asking the question, “why do we see rainbow colours on the surface of a DVD?”.

Light from a laser is shone through a diffraction grating to demonstrate a diffraction pattern.  The terms 0^th, 1^st and 2^nd order maxima are introduced and explained using the...

This video recaps on the idea that light sent along an optical fibre requires total internal reflection for it to progress along its length. It explains that information is sent as a series of on – off signals.  However, if light rays take different paths they can be modally dispersed, and this can degrade the...