OxNet Seminar 2 saw students exploring Physics with Brian Tanner, Emeritus Professor of Physics at Durham University. He introduced them to the notion of collaborative reading by demonstrating an image-formation experiment. This involved students carefully observing a coin’s supposed change of position as water was poured into a vessel, demonstrating refraction at water-air interface. The seminar ended on a discussion about spectacles – When were they invented? Who invented them? Was it Roger Bacon’s experiment on slicing a sphere which created a lens? Or the Arab invention of a ‘reading stone’?
