Lab Out Loud » physics

Episode 68 – Modeling Instruction in the Science Classroom

Dale — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 06:30:44 +0000

Mark Schober

This week we talk with Mark Schober about using Modeling Instruction in the science classroom. As president of the American Modeling Teacher’s Association, Mark shares with us a history of modeling, how it can be used in the classroom and that it is for more than just physics courses.

Links

To listen to this episode, download the mp3 directly, find us on iTunes, or use the player below.

Episode 66 – But Are They Really Learning?

Dale — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 05:30:49 +0000

Frank Noschese

This week we discuss teaching techniques with Frank Noschese. Frank is a high school physics teacher at John Jay High School in Cross River, N.Y. and an active blogger. We talk with Frank about blogging, active student engagement, flipped classrooms, psuedoteaching, and the Khan Academy. Join the conversation and leave your comments.

Preview from the Show:

There’s a lot of research and evidence to backup the fact that having a more interactive class does work. And there’s a lot of ways to go about being interactive. One way is with the questioning technique that you were talking about in the Harvard justice videos; I haven’t seen them, but it sounds like that’s one way. Or using clickers is another way. Or with whiteboarding and modeling, where the kids are working in groups on these problems, and they’re working on them on these large whiteboards that maybe two or three kids can work on at a time, and they share and present their solutions to the problem. So there’s lot of different techniques depending on the size of the class and the materials that you have, so I don’t think anybody should just be able to throw their hands up and say “well based on my situation, the only thing I can do is lecture”, because there’s always different techniques.

If you think back to even how you learned – something that you found you had to struggle through, whether it was a sport or an instrument, or a kind of arts and crafts, woodworking – anything like that. You worked hard at it, got feedback from someone who knew what they were doing, there were lots of tests along the way to see if you were getting it or not. That kind of interactivity and feedback is so necessary for learning. And then there’s also people that say – we had this conversation on twitter a few months ago – where somebody said “but kids do learn from lecture, there are kids that are gaining.” And it’s true, there are kids that do still learn physics through lecture, and what we think is going on there is that the kids are doing these active engagement strategies in their head, so they’re trying to think ahead: “what’s the next step this would take”, or “how does this fit in with that,” and they’re doing it in their head. And these are very few kids that actually know how to learn from a lecture, and I would say the bulk of students just sit there and think that they’re going to learn from osmosis.

Links:

Action-Reaction (Frank’s Blog)
Frank on MSNBC talking about
Frank on flipped classrooms with USA Today
Follow Frank on Twitter
Frank on the Web: Frank’s Posterous, Noschese 180, Win? Fail? PHYSICS!, WQDYH?
Harvard’s Justice with Michael Sandel
A Private Universe
dy/dan (Dan Meyer)
Geoset (Global Educational Outreach for Science, Engineering and Technology)
Veritasium Science Videos

To listen to this episode, download the mp3 directly, find us on iTunes, or use the player below.

Physics falls short for Farmers Insurance ad

Dale — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 16:04:46 +0000

I was flipping through my most recent copy of Wired magazine when I noticed this Farmer’s Insurance ad. At first glance, I was happy to see that they were using the metric system until I noticed that middle flight. Wait, the cow went a distance of 185 m/s?

Farmers fails physics

Yes, this is just a silly ad. I should relax and let it slide. Right? Then again, the insurance business is all about numbers, units, and equations.

Speaking of equations, let’s take a look at those numbers again.

A closer look at the numbers

The cow is a projectile launched at 70 degrees off the horizontal with an initial velocity of 42 m/s.

Oh no. It’s not just a little slip on a label; all the distances are wrong too.

Zip over to the Wolfram Alpha site for the correct answers.

Wolfram Alpha can solve this

Looks like I’ll be saving this image for my physics students to investigate. I guess it is back to school for Farmers.

Episode 62 – The Sitcom Experiment

Dale — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 05:30:24 +0000

Bill Prady

Bill Prady, Executive Producer and co-creator of the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory, joins us to talk about one of our favorite science shows.

Links:

Direct download: LOL62.mp3

Episode 56 – More Chemistry Videos from the PTOV

Dale — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 06:30:08 +0000

To kick off the International Year of Chemistry, we talk with Dr. Martyn Poliakoff and Dr. Samantha Tang from The Periodic Table of Videos. Having completed all videos for all 118 elements, the team is working on updating every element video, while adding other videos such as molecular videos and chemical definition videos. Drs. Poliakoff and Tang talk to us about upcoming events in the International Year of Chemistry and their work with Periodic Table of Videos

Periodic Table of Videos Team

Links:

Chem Definition Video: Polyatomic

The International Year of Chemistry 2011 (IYC 2011) is a worldwide celebration of the achievements of chemistry and its contributions to the well-being of humankind. Under the unifying theme “Chemistry—our life, our future,” IYC 2011 will offer a range of interactive, entertaining, and educational activities for all ages. The Year of Chemistry is intended to reach across the globe, with opportunities for public participation at the local, regional, and national level.

Direct download: LOL56.mp3

Episode 51 – Science We Can Blog About

Brian — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 05:30:35 +0000

Rhett Allain

This week we discuss our favorite science blogs and talk to Rhett Allain – an Associate Professor of physics at Southeastern Louisiana University. Rhett discusses science teaching and his popular blog Dot Physics, at www.wired.com/wiredscience/dotphysics.

What science blogs do you follow? Join the conversation at laboutloud.com to share your favorite science blogs and websites.

Want to setup an RSS Reader? Read “Setup an RSS Reader” or and watch Google Reader in Plain English (below):

Our Favorite Science Blogs (in alphabetical order):

Our Blogs:

dalebasler.com (Dale)
BaslerCast (Dale’s Class Blog)
explodingsink.com (Brian)
bartelements.com (Brian’s Class Website)

Direct download: LOL51.mp3

A Dashboard Physics Lesson

Dale — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 20:41:31 +0000

For several years I’ve turned my students loose with a rather boring video of my speedometer as I traveled around town.

The best part of this video is that I don’t need to come up with an assignment. I just play the video. It doesn’t take more than a minute for questions to start bubbling out of the students?

How long did you do this?
Where did you go?
How far did you drive?

And there it is. A physics lesson. I send the students off with a challenge: “tell us everything you can about my trip.”

A few days later students share their findings, and more importantly, how they were found. Students share answers to all their initial questions along with some new answers to questions like:

What was the average speed?
What was the top acceleration?
Should I get a speeding ticket?

At this point there is at least one student who asks, “so what’s the right answer?” You need to be careful here. I keep the emphasis on how we conducted our investigations and which method is more accurate. That being said, I do share more information with students by doing the following.

At the end, I keep the camera rolling and simply pan over to the odometer to show how far I traveled. I trim this part off the video before initially sharing it with students.
Odometer
Use a second camera to synchronize video of the road with the speedometer.
Picture-in-picture
Collect GPS waypoints to create a Google Map of your trip.
Google Maps

I’ve made the speedometer video many different ways but the best, and safest, way for me to get a straight-on view of the speedometer was to tape a webcam to the dash and record the video to a laptop sitting on the passenger’s seat.

Webcam on dash

To get the video of the road, I taped my pocket camcorder to a lead block and set it on top of the dashboard. With both the webcam and camcorder recording, I made on loud clap with my hands so I could use that audio point to synchronize the video in Final Cut Express.

To capture video of road

The waypoints were collected using the GPS on my phone and the free My Tracks app from Google. Apple iPhone users should be able to find similar apps online. Vernier has software and hardware that also allows you to do a lot with GPS.

My Tracks

I’ve always enjoyed teaching with lessons like this and I think the students enjoy it too. Until recently, I’ve never known what to call lessons like this but I think former math teacher Dan Meyer has come up with a name. Dan uses the simple label “What can you do with this?” or “WCYDWT” at his blog. He explains the need for more lessons like this during a TED Talk and has many other examples.

Episode 44 – Griff Jones and the IIHS

Brian — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 06:15:46 +0000

Griff Jones

Griff Jones is an award-winning science teacher plucked from teaching high school to work with UFTeach – a program with the University of Florida designed to increase the quantity and quality of secondary mathematics and science teachers. Griff was also selected to work with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety to make two videos about understanding the science behind car crashes: Understanding Car Crashes: When Physics Meets Biology & Understanding Car Crashes: It’s Basic Physics. Griff talks to us about the videos, the IIHS, and their many resources for science teachers.

Make sure to visit Griff and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety at the 2010 NSTA Conference on Science Education in Philadephia.

Links:

(IIHS) Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
IIHS Vehicle Ratings
IIHS Videos: “Understanding Car Crashes: When Physics Meets Biology” & “Understanding Car Crashes: It’s Basic Physics”
50th Anniversary crash test video: 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air & 2009 Chevrolet Malibu
2010 NSTA Conference on Science Education in Philadephia
UFTeach
Griff Jones – UFTeach Biography (pdf)
Griff Jones – Products from Science Kit
‘Galileo’ Subs for Instructor in UFTeach Lab
UF Today: Two former high school teachers show their college students how to teach math and science. The first lesson is to have fun

From Paul G. Hewitt, the developer of the “Conceptual Physics” curriculum and author of the best selling text book by the same name: “The video “Understanding Car Crashes: It’s Basic Physics” and accompanying teacher’s guide are wonderful. The pacing is excellent, the coverage fascinating, and most importantly, the physics is correct. It’s a first rate teaching package. I give it five stars!” (www.iihs.org/videos/default.html)

Direct download: LOL44.mp3

Episode 43 – Mythbusters’ Adam Savage

Dale — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 06:15:18 +0000

Adam Savage

We first met Adam Savage (from the Mythbusters) at The Amaz!ng Meeting 7 last summer, where he gave a talk about the creative process and failure that comes with ‘making’. Of course, we knew that we had to get Adam on the show. A few months later, we were lucky to talk with Adam about the Mythbusters, science education, and how he uses both experimentation and learning from mistakes in his work both on and off the show.

Links:

Direct download: LOL43.mp3

Episode 40 – Being Sean Carroll

Brian — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 06:15:33 +0000

Sean Carroll (physicist) and Sean B. Carroll (biologist) talk to us about their respective science fields, science education and being Sean Carroll. (NOTE: Scientists displayed below in alphabetical order)

Links:

Sean B Carroll

Sean B. Carroll (biologist)

seanbc arroll.com
Sean B. Carroll’s Lab
About Sean B. Carroll
HHMI Investigator Bio
Remarkable Creatures – NY Times Column
The Science of Evolution (video from the New York Times)
What Darwin Never Knew (PBS)
“Year of Darwin” You Tube Video
Lecture Video from Q2C Festival
Sean B Carroll at Scientific Commons
Sean B Carroll Author Page at Amazon.com
Lab Out Loud, Episode 2: Sean B. Carroll
Lab Out Loud, Episode 26: Stories of Evolution
Sean B. Carroll on Resurrecting the Extinct
(60 Minutes – 01/10/10)

Sean M Carroll

Sean M Carroll (physicist)

Direct download: LOL40.mp3