Three scientists won the Nobel Prize for physics on Tuesday for work that found order in seeming disorder, helping to explain and predict complex forces of nature, including expanding our understanding of climate change.
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2021 was awarded "for groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of complex systems" with one half jointly to Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann "for the physical modelling of Earth's climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming" and the other half to Giorgio Parisi "for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales."
Here is the link to the Nobel prize site in relation to their award:
Here is a more 'plain English' version of what their award was about.
As lesson activities you might want to consider the following ideas :
Analyse the reporting of the articles in the link we have provided
investigate the past winners and their backgrounds (who was the only winner to receive two separate prize categories, who was the first woman)
investigate who was Alfred Nobel and the source of his wealth
explore categories of topic winners, within the major award
explore in detail the specific research these winners have undertaken and their benefit to the world (and if not)
consider the alternative views (including politics and controversies that the science helped dispel or maybe create) and,
perhaps for maths and other lessons look to research and document graphs of winners by country, gender and so on.
We as teachers might share and inspire our students and what's to say their might soon be a winner that came from Fiji? We have won Olmpic Gold medals, have sportsmen and women on the international stage so why not a Nobel?
