Teaching Chemistry with a Gyroscope? Why it’s a brilliant way to explain NMR

 

Teaching Chemistry with a Gyroscope?

Why it’s a brilliant way to explain NMR

At first glance, a gyroscope feels more at home in a physics lesson than a chemistry lab.
But when it comes to explaining Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), it becomes an unexpectedly powerful teaching tool.

The NMR problem students always hit

For many students, NMR fails not because of the chemistry—but because of the physics intuition gap.

They’re asked to imagine:

• tiny nuclear spins

• placed in a strong magnetic field

• absorbing radiofrequency energy

• and precessing rather than simply flipping

All perfectly logical… once you’ve seen it.

Enter the gyroscope

A spinning gyroscope in a gravitational field does something wonderfully non-intuitive:

• It doesn’t fall over

• It precesses around the vertical

• The motion depends on spin rate and external torque

Sound familiar?

That smooth, circular motion of the gyroscope axis maps beautifully onto:

• nuclear spins in a magnetic field

• the idea of Larmor precession

• why NMR signals are frequency-specific

Suddenly, NMR stops being abstract mathematics and starts behaving like something students can watch, feel, and predict.

Why this works so well in teaching

✔ It turns vectors into motion
✔ It links physics intuition to chemical analysis
✔ It gives students a mental model they can reuse
✔ It demystifies why resonance happens at specific frequencies

I’ve found that once students see the gyroscope in action, NMR spectra stop feeling like magic—and start feeling logical.

And that’s always the goal.

 

Gun Cotton Through a Multispectral Lens

Observing Nitrocellulose in Visible Light, Infrared, and Ultraviolet

Gun cotton – more formally nitrocellulose – is one of those substances that looks utterly unremarkable until it very suddenly isn’t.

To the naked eye, a small piece of gun cotton looks like… well, cotton wool. But touch a flame to it and it vanishes in a brilliant flash, leaving almost no ash behind. It’s dramatic, fast, and a perfect candidate for looking at combustion beyond what our eyes can see.

This time, instead of just watching it burn, I pointed a multispectral camera at the reaction and recorded it in visible light, infrared (IR), and ultraviolet (UV).

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🔥 What’s Actually Happening Chemically?

Gun cotton is cellulose where some of the –OH groups have been replaced with –ONO₂ (nitrate ester) groups. That means:

• Oxygen is already built into the fuel

• Combustion doesn’t rely on air diffusing in

• The reaction is extremely fast

In effect, the material carries both the fuel and the oxidiser in the same structure.

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👀 What We See in Visible Light

In normal visible footage:

• A sudden white-yellow flash

• Very little smoke

• Almost no solid residue

It’s so fast that high frame-rate video is essential if you want to see anything more than a blink.

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🌡️ What Infrared Reveals

Infrared imaging tells a completely different story.

In IR you can clearly see:

• A rapid temperature spike as the reaction front propagates

• Hot gases expanding outward after the visible flash has gone

• Heat lingering in the air, even though the cotton has vanished

This is a lovely teaching moment:
👉 The reaction is over visually, but thermally it’s still very much happening.

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🌌 What UV Shows Us

Ultraviolet is where things get really interesting.

Under UV-sensitive imaging:

• The flame structure appears more extended

• Excited molecular species emit strongly outside the visible spectrum

• The reaction zone looks larger than it appears to the eye

This helps explain why nitrocellulose reactions are so energetic despite appearing “clean” and residue-free.

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🧠 Why This Matters for Teaching

This experiment is a brilliant reminder that:

• Our eyes are terrible scientific instruments

• Combustion isn’t just “fire” – it’s light, heat, radiation, and chemistry

• Multispectral imaging turns a simple demo into a rich data source

It’s exactly the sort of thing that makes students stop and say:

“Oh… I didn’t expect that.”

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⚠️ Safety Note (Always!)

Gun cotton demonstrations must be:

• Done with very small quantities we used less than 0.25g

• Conducted in a clear, controlled space

• Supervised by someone who understands the chemistry

• Filmed at a safe distance (another win for cameras!)

 

Adding Hauptwerk to an Eminent 3-Manual Organ

Bringing Theatre Organ Style to a Classic Instrument

One of the joys of classic electronic organs is just how adaptable they can be with modern technology. By integrating Hauptwerk virtual organ software with a traditional Eminent three-manual organ, it’s possible to open the door to an entirely new musical world — especially the rich, expressive sound of the theatre organ 

Why this combination works so well

The Eminent 3-manual organ already has many of the physical features that theatre organists love:

• Multiple manuals for fast registration changes

• Plenty of stops and pistons

• A solid console feel that encourages expressive playing

By adding Hauptwerk, the organ is no longer limited to its original voicing. Instead, it becomes a highly flexible controller for sampled pipe organs from around the world.

Theatre organ styles on a classical console

Hauptwerk includes (or can host) superb theatre organ sample sets, complete with:

• Tibias and bright solo reeds

• Rich tremulants

• Percussion, couplers, and orchestral effects

Suddenly, the Eminent can sing, whisper, and swagger like a cinema organ — perfect for silent-film accompaniment, light music, or just having fun exploring a very different repertoire.

What’s involved technically?

The setup is surprisingly achievable:

• MIDI connections from manuals, pedals, and pistons

• A computer running Hauptwerk

• A decent audio interface and speaker system (or headphones)

Once configured, registration changes, expression pedals, and even toe pistons can be mapped to feel completely natural.

Why it’s worth doing

• Massive sound palette from one instrument

• Switch between classical and theatre styles instantly

• Ideal for home practice without needing a pipe organ

• Opens up new genres and performance ideas

For anyone who owns — or has access to — a classic electronic organ, adding Hauptwerk isn’t about replacing the instrument. It’s about extending its life and discovering what it can become in the 21st century.

B-Roll: Capture Now, Thank Yourself Later

Sometimes you head out to film with a clear brief, a script, and a shot list.
And sometimes… you don’t.

You just see something interesting:
light falling across a bench, steam rising from a kettle, students concentrating, a sail flapping, a close-up of equipment humming quietly in the background. You hit record, not knowing exactly why.

That footage? That’s B-roll gold.

Months later, when you’re editing a video, cutting a short for social media, or rescuing a section that feels visually flat, you suddenly realise:
“I’ve got a shot for this.”

Why Filming B-Roll Without a Project Is a Smart Habit

1. B-roll ages well
Good detail shots, atmospheres, and processes are often timeless. A clip filmed today might fit perfectly into a project a year from now.

2. It speeds up future edits
Instead of scrambling to re-film, you already have visual material to:

• cover jump cuts

• illustrate ideas

• add pacing and rhythm

• make explanations feel more real

3. It captures authenticity
Unplanned B-roll often feels more natural. No pressure. No performance. Just real moments happening.

4. It builds a personal visual library
Over time, you’re not just filming clips—you’re creating a stock library of your own work, tailored exactly to your style, subjects, and brand.

What’s Worth Filming “Just in Case”?

• Hands working (setting up kit, tying knots, adjusting controls)

• Close-ups of tools, instruments, screens, notebooks

• Environmental shots: rooms, labs, boats, desks, corridors

• Transitions: walking, opening doors, setting things down

• Light changes, weather, movement, texture

If it catches your eye, there’s a good chance it will catch an editor’s eye later too.

A Simple Rule of Thumb

If something makes you pause for two seconds and think “that looks interesting” — film ten seconds of it.

Storage is cheap. Missed moments aren’t.

 Using a Multispectral Camera to Tell Artificial Grass from Real Grass

To the human eye, real grass and artificial grass can look almost identical—especially when the plastic version is new and neatly laid.

But switch to a multispectral camera, and the difference becomes impossible to hide.

🌈 What a Multispectral Camera Sees (That We Can’t)

A multispectral camera captures light beyond visible colour, particularly:

• Red

• Near-infrared (NIR)

This is crucial, because living plants interact with light in a very specific way.

• Real grass absorbs red light for photosynthesis and strongly reflects near-infrared light.

• Artificial grass reflects light much more evenly and does not show the NIR “vegetation signature.”

(In this artificial grass, we can see the moss growing as it is a different colour)

🧪 The NDVI Test (The Dead Giveaway)

When multispectral data is processed into indices such as NDVI (Normalised Difference Vegetation Index):

• 🌱 Real grass shows up clearly as vegetation (bright tones in false-colour or NDVI maps)

• 🧱 Artificial grass appears dull, flat, or even indistinguishable from paths, roofs, or plastic surfaces

No chlorophyll = no vegetation signal.

🔍 Why This Is So Powerful

This technique is used routinely in:

• Agriculture (crop health & stress)

• Environmental monitoring

• Land-use mapping

• Urban heat and green-space studies

And it works just as beautifully at the scale of:

• A school field

• A garden lawn

• A playground

🌍 Why It Matters

Artificial grass is often marketed as “green” and low-maintenance—but multispectral imaging reminds us:

• It isn’t biologically active

• It doesn’t photosynthesise

• It doesn’t cool the environment like real grass

• It doesn’t support ecosystems in the same way

Looking green isn’t the same as being green.

🎓 In Education & Outreach

For teaching, this is gold dust:

• Photosynthesis becomes visible

• Abstract ideas like spectral reflectance suddenly make sense

• Students instantly grasp how satellites and drones classify land use

It’s one of those moments where science feels a bit like magic.