The Physics Staffroom — Issue 1

Fortnight ending Saturday 11 April 2026. Read time: about 5 minutes.

If the last fortnight had a theme, it was “gravity is still there, even when your students swear it isn’t”. Between a crewed lunar flyby, antimatter going for a cautious lorry ride, and an observatory casually finding thousands of new asteroids before its main survey even starts, physics has been doing its usual trick of being both majestic and faintly inconvenient.

Right then. Kettle on. Eyes on the board.

Humans did a lunar flyby again — and the re-entry physics was the real spectacle.
NASA’s Artemis II mission ended with a Pacific splashdown on 10 April, after a crewed loop around the Moon and back — the kind of headline that turns “energy conversions” from a worksheet into an actual flaming reality. If you want one classroom-ready hook, use the mission’s official return announcement alongside the lunar-flyby image gallery to talk about free-return trajectories, comms blackouts, and why “friction” is a criminally underspecified word when you hit the atmosphere at lunar-return speeds.

Source: NASA

Antimatter went on a road trip — and it’s basically an A-level fields question in real life.

Researchers in CERN’s BASE collaboration managed to transport a tiny cloud of antiprotons in a portable cryogenic Penning trap, driven across the site in a truck — a first step toward doing ultra-precise antimatter measurements away from noisy magnetic environments. The clean story for students: charged particles + magnetic confinement + near-vacuum + “please don’t hit a pothole.” Start with the primary write-up from CERN, then (if you want a more journalistic explainer) skim the Phys.org coverage.

Source: CERN

A brand-new observatory found over 11,000 new asteroids before its main survey even begins.

Early data from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory has already produced a haul of asteroid discoveries — and they were confirmed by the Minor Planet Center. For teaching, this is gold: detection thresholds, noise vs signal, what “confirmation” means in science, and why “we looked and saw nothing” is not the same as “there is nothing.” The press release is readable and specific: Early Data… Reveals Over 11,000 New Asteroids.

Source: NOIRLab

One lesson, one photo: “Earthset” and the geometry of orbits (KS4–KS5).

Use the Artemis II “Earthset” image as a 15–20 minute thinking task: project Earthset From the Lunar Far Side and ask (1) why Earth can “set” at all, (2) what has to be true about the observer’s motion, and (3) what forces are (and aren’t) acting to create “weightlessness”. Then run the same idea in a simulation: the NASA SVS flyby visualisation is perfect for line-of-sight and frames of reference (Simulating the Artemis II Lunar Flyby). If you want a quick extension, let students test orbital intuition with PhET’s Gravity and Orbits.

Source: NASA Earth Observatory

Exam Board Watch: Edexcel A-level Physics Paper 3 practical answers (support session).

Pearson has a free online session focused on helping students answer the practical questions on Paper 3 — including classroom strategies and live-marking of responses. If Paper 3 is where your cohort quietly loses marks, this is directly relevant: April 2026 Teaching Science update.

Source: Pearson Qualifications

A-level CPD you can actually attend mid-term, without leaving the sofa.
Institute of Physics’s IOPSpark events page (updated 9 April) lists free teacher/technician sessions, including the IOP Teaching Physics 16–19 Programme with a straightforward registration link: IOPSpark Events. This is the rare CPD that doesn’t require a supply-cover heist.

Source: IOPSpark

Stretch and sparkle: the British Physics Olympiad’s Junior Physics Challenge window opens soon.

If you’ve got a Year 10 set who enjoy being mildly haunted by a good problem, the British Physics Olympiad Junior Physics Challenge can be sat under teacher supervision between 24 April and 15 May 2026: BPhO Junior Physics Challenge. It’s a reliable way to turn “thinking hard” into something students can point to.

Source: British Physics Olympiad

Physics Video of the Fortnight

If you want a single video that does space physics + engineering reality without the usual movie nonsense, use Artemis II Flight Day 10 Highlights. It’s packed with teachable moments: plasma blackout, deceleration, parachute staging, and that slightly surreal “we aimed for the ocean and hit it” precision. Useful both as a starter and as revision glue for energy/forces in unfamiliar contexts.

Source: YouTube

Physics Misconception of the Fortnight
Misconception: “Astronauts are weightless because there’s no gravity in space.”
Correct framing: Weightlessness is what you get when everything is in free fall together — gravity is still acting, but there’s no support force (no normal contact force) to make you feel weight.
Why students get stuck: Everyday language (“zero gravity”) smuggles in the idea that gravity switches off above the atmosphere, and students conflate “no weight reading” with “no gravitational field.” NASA’s explanation is blunt and useful: “Zero gravity is a misnomer… Free-floating astronauts are actually in freefall.”

Source: NASA JPL (GRACE-FO)

An IOPSpark guide to the classic Van de Graaff generator is one of the most reliable ways to make electrostatics feel concrete, particularly at GCSE where static charge and sparking are explicitly taught. The practical sequence in Experiments with a Van de Graaff generator shows simple, high-impact demos (charged spheres repelling, hair standing on end, controlled sparks to an earthed conductor), while the companion safety guidance highlights essentials that are easy to miss early on (keep electronics well away, use volunteers only, and ensure proper earthing). If it “isn’t working”, it’s almost always humidity or surface leakage—drying with a hairdryer and cleaning insulating supports, as shown in this walkthrough video featuring Michael de Podesta, usually fixes it.

Source: IOPSpark (Institute of Physics)

Source: MIT

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.

— Richard P. Feynman, from “Cargo Cult Science” (1974).

Source: Caltech Library

The Physics Staffroom is a human–AI collaboration. AI helps gather and format material, but each issue’s selection, verification, editing, design, and regular features are all curated by a humble, human physics teacher! 🤓