Afternoon Submitted Papers & Workshops

The audience at Spring 2012

Mark Hurwitz, Fathom in the Physics Lab

Mark demonstrated how to use the Fathom program with Vernier probes to graph and analyze experimental data. The program allows students to quickly drag and drop meters, tables, graphs and more. Students can also manipulate graphs so that they can visually see the differences between their data analysis and what they expect to see. Mark’s students are able to use the program at home as well so that they can continue to analyze their information. Fathom only works with Vernier probes.

Bree Barnett Dreyfuss, Review Strategies

Bree discussed a variety of review strategies that she has used in her classroom. Aside from a traditional review, students can review materials using a variety of games or projects. Bree uses a lot of materials available from the Resource Area For Teachers, or RAFT, to create her games and activities.  The entire powerpoint and accompanying materials are available on her website here.

Evan, White, CSU Chico – The Beneficial Application of Stupidity in Inquiry

Evan read an article about “absolute stupidity” (link coming soon) and discussed his own pursuit of pure science through inquiry. Evan is in the credential program now and has been experimented with inquiry in one of his units as part of his student teaching program. He experienced success using an Inquiry Model and plans to continue it.

Cathy Cox, Lake Tahoe Community College – NASA Research Opportunities for Community College Students

Cathy discussed her recent experience with NASA’s Community College Aerospace Scholars program with her students and their research project “Structural integrity and mathematical modeling of singular soap bubbles in micro gravity and hyper gravity.” Students had to develop their research plan, device, secure funding, etc. before heading to NASA’s Houston facility. Cathy described the process of applying to the program, creating the apparatus and their work with their NASA assigned mentors.  Cathy showed several pictures of their research and experience on the zero-gravity flights.

Leanna Ferlardo, Oroville High School – Remediation That Does Not Stink!

Leanna described a few remediation strategies she uses. Her first strategy is to develop Mastery Quizzes on each main unit. Students are told that they have to pass the Mastery Quiz with 100% or the score will be entered as a 0. Students are given the test a few times in class and must retake it until they reach 100%. After the first few times in class students have to make the effort to come in and retake the Mastery Quiz until they get 100%. Students are very motivated to retake the test to get the 100% because otherwise they have a 0% and the tests are heavily weighted. Leanna also records the number of students that missed each question so that the ones that are missed frequently can be reviewed in class. Students can review their test and have the option to retake the test with different tests and can increase their score. Leanna provided examples of a Mastery Quiz, her grade book and several sample tests.

Business Meeting

Election of officers: 
David Marasco will continue as President, and will also absorb Program Chair
Dennis Buckley will continue as Treasurer and Membership Coordinator
Frank Cascarano will continue as VP Colleges/ Universities
Leanna Felardo will continue as VP of High Schools
Bree Barnett Dreyfuss will continue as Secretary
Lee Trampleasure will continue as Webmaster and will also be the Section Rep
Paul Robinson will continue as a Historian
Tom Woosnam will continue to provide insight as a Past President

Read more »

Keynote Speaker:

David Bennum, Recruiting Physics Majors from Grades 2-8, University of Navada, Reno

Keynot Speaker Spring 2012

There is little development of Physics curriculum in the lower grade levels and thus the population that could be interested in Physics is scared away.  Dr. Bennum has created a “Physics on the Road” program that brings science into local schools to introduce young students to Physics. Dr. Bennum shared several pictures of his program over the years of students at assemblies and workshop with middle school and elementary school students. The program has reached up to 2,000 students in the K-8 programs each year. He continues to develop new activities and demonstrations for the program, including plans for building a Howler Trombone based on a Howler pipe design (link). Several buses have been donated over the years to bring students and equipment to the program. In recent years the project has also added some astronomy concepts and using telescopes. The hope is to expand the program to include college students from University of Nevada, Reno to accompanying the Dr. Bennum to the local schools. There are plans to have a large public viewing for the upcoming solar eclipse at the MacClean Observatory at Redfield Campus.

The Physics department at the University of Nevada, Reno is also developing an Astronomy  Minor and Astrophysics Major. The hope is to create an option for students who are interested in Astronomy or are in a major that requires scientific literacy to take some classes. This has developed an off shoot program, ”Taking the Stars on the Road” to increase the local interest in Astronomy. The University has struggled with decreasing numbers in Physics and have adjusted the requirements for majors in order to decrease the “scare factor” and make it much more accessible.

Spring 2012 Share & Tell Notes

Lee Trampleasure, Carondelet High School  – deriving the kinematics equation experimentally

Handout available here.

Students use TI calculators to derive the kinematics equations. Students graph a linear position-time graph for different constant velocity cars. Student graph the data by hand and then uses linear regression to calculate the slope which will vary from student to student as their best fit lines differ. Students then plot a constant acceleration car and graph that data in their calculators. By taking various tangent lines students create a separate graph of the velocity-time for the car. Using the equation supplied by the calculator they begin to see the relationship between their y-intercept on the y=ax+b equation from the velocity-time graph matches the b in their equation for the position to time graph (x=at^2+bt+c).

David Talcott, Carlmont High School (c/o Bree) – Planck’s constant apparatus

Recently David has posted about a homemade device to derive Planck’s constant. Below an excerpt from David’s explanation:

Planck's Constant Apparatus

The concept is pretty simple, shine light on a piece of metal, electrons eject, detect energy of electrons for each frequency of light, plot energy/frequency, slope is planks constant.   There is a phet simulation that illustrates this process. The device that I have built use a phototube (1p39 or 929 tube) these can be purchased on eBay for about $35.  The rest of the apparatus costs about 35 dollars.  The Sargent welch equivalent cost around 800 dollars.

John Boyce , iFly – indoor skydiving

John Boyce demonstrates devices used in the iFly tunnel.

The iFly Education website has more information.

John is encouraging Physics teachers to come to any of the eight iFly facilities as a field trip. Students will be able to tour the facility, learn to fly, participate in flight and walk away with pictures and video. Several members have taken field trips there and enjoyed it.

Frank Cascarano, Foothill College – SawStop.com

A former science teacher became a patent lawyer and developed the SawStop. An electrical signal is put onto the saw blade and as soon as an electrically conductive material comes in contact with the blade the potential difference drops. This signals the saw to stop in a hundredth of a second. A powerful video using a hot dog demonstrates the concept. The blade is electrically isolated and thus the saw must be bought separate and is a “one time shot.”

Mark Hurwitz demonstrates a ring launcher

Mark Hurwitz, Lick-Wilmerding High School

Mark demonstrated his Ring Launcher commonly used to explain Lenz’s Law. The common rings made of plastic, aluminum ring with a slit and an aluminum ring without a slit. In addition to that there is a coil with a light bulb. An additional demonstration then is to move the coil and lightbulb down the length of the rod and observe the brightness increase as it lowers closer to the coil.

David explains Lenz's Law

This led to a great discussion led by David Kagan about how such demonstrations are not actually demonstrating Lenz’s Law. We look forward to linking David’s full explanation soon.

Bree Barnett Dreyfuss, Amador Valley High School – Leyden Jar examples

Bree explained that her students build a simple Leyden Jar capacitor out of a film can. This year she experimented with the dissectable Leyden Jar available here. Through a lot of dramatic demonstration you can use it to teach students that the charge in a capacitor is stored on the plastic of the cup. Several years ago a student made a much larger version of the Leyden jar (picture coming soon) nicknamed the “Freshmen Killer” that she had not yet used. When the student came back to visit he insisted that they experiment with the Leyden Jar. Bree purposely took the shock provided by the dissectable Leyden Jar (not recommended) and felt a shock through her mid-foreman. When she did the same with the larger Leyden Jar (really not advisable) she felt a shock up to her shoulder. Smaller Leyden Jars can light a small neon bulb but the larger Leyden jar can actually light an 8” fluorescent tube!

Gunjan Raizada Chakravarty – Sowing the Seed of Physics

Dr. G demonstrates several different quick demonstrations of Physics that she uses with younger students to break the cycle of fear surrounding Physics.  Several easy to access kid-friendly materials can be used to explain different aspects of students. Dr. G travels to different schools and provides demonstrations to kids about Physics.

Lee Trampleasure, webmaster, updated the membership on the new tools of the website. He introduced informative polls, the new job board and our RSS feed capabilities. Lee is even creating websites for several other sections of AAPT. Way to go Lee!

High School Roundtable

As part of our support for high school Physics teachers we held a High School round table in the afternoon at our Fall meeting. The topics of (1) discipline, (2) level of curriculum, (3) grading/ paperwork and (4) making policy changes were discussed. Some material is available on each topic under Roundtable Resources. You can also download the High School Roundtable Notes from our discussion; if I left anything out please let me know by emailing BreeBarnett@hotmail.com.

Fall 2011 Pictures posted!

Pictures from the NCNAAPT Fall Meeting and Conference are available on Flickr or on our Facebook fan page. Some pictures and relevant diagrams are available within the notes for the day. Be sure to email Secretary Bree Barnett Dreyfuss with additional information, corrections, etc.

Group photo Fall 2011

Group photo with title

Fall Business Meeting

Dennis Buckley gave the Treasurer’s report, including $1,300 over budget last fiscal year. Using color postcards to advertise meetings and to send programs. We currently have $4,700 in the checking account.

Don’t forget about the Spring Meeting, April 20th & 21st in Lake Tahoe hosted by the Tahoe Community College. More information to come.

Keynote Speaker: Richard Muller

Richard Muller is a UC Berkeley professor of the popular “Physics for Future Presidents” class at UC Berkeley and author of a popular book of the same name. Muller discussed his development of his “Physics for Future Presidents” non-Physics major Physics course at University of California, Berkeley. The class has become a course that does not include as many calculations as a Physics course for Physics majors but rather fewer calculations that demonstrate more content. Throughout his development of the course Muller has discovered much about how students, both Physics majors and non-Physics majors, think and comprehend knowledge. His goal for every course is to teach students so that they can randomly recall relevant Physics knowledge when challenged. Muller shared many anecdotes about his students over the years demonstrating Physics knowledge they gained from his class. He also advocates using units and examples that are relevant and measurable for students. Muller uses the food calorie for energy and often has students compare large amount of energy, including the amount of energy released during the September 11^th attacks, to the amount of energy in calories in a chocolate cookie.

Richard Muller, keynote speaker

Several publications by Muller were previewed including his college level textbook “Physics and Technology for Future Presidents:
An Introduction to the Essential Physics Every World Leader Needs to Know” and a smaller non-textbook book called “The Instant Physicist.” Educators should write to the Princeton University Press to request a copy of the book, free of charge.

Muller did briefly discussed his work with climate change by showing a brief animation of the changes in surface changes over time. More information is available on the Berkeley Earth website and the video is available on YouTube.

Fall Meeting: Show & Tell Notes

[pictures taken today will be posted soon]

David with rubber bat

A detail shot using Fox's Infared camera

David Kagan, CSU Chico

David shared a rubber bat that he can use to find the “sweet spot.” Contact David for the information of the company that made it for him for $50. It was a movie prop but you have to tell them that you don’t want a dowel in it.

David shared video of a baseball hit at the batter’s footer with a regular video and then with the Fox News Infared camera. The

transfer of energy to the ball from the bat makes the ball hot enough to be bright white. The place where the baseball hit his foot also glows white; amazingly the ball is now only half white. More information is available on his website: www.phys.csuchico.edu/baseball

Frank Cascarano, Foothill College

Joulies coffee accessory

Frank with a Joulie

Frank shared a small object called a “Joulie” that has a material in it that melts at 140 degrees. When dropped in hot coffee it absorbed energy to cool your coffee but when your coffee cools below that same temperature it releases energy to the cup of coffee.

Bernard Cleyet, retired

Bernard Cleyet shares video

Bernard showed a video of a different glass materials heated and used as a conductor in a simple electrical circuit with a light bulb. The experiment used Sodium glass, pure silica, and Pyrex and plugged into an outlet. Bernard also offered lots of capacitors for anyone who needed some.

Don demos his micrometer

Don Rathjen, Exploratorium Teacher Institute

Don demonstrated a home-made micrometer that will measure one millimeter per rotation.  With 24 threads per inch, one turn is ~1mm, but it will measure within 10% error. Can use to measure the width of a hair, different wire gauges, etc. Don will be posting the instructions with photos on his website soon.

Shel Randall, Sierra College

POV Ray is a scripting tool that lets you make images with simple commands. Shel shared a short animation about thin film interference that he has made in the last year. He encouraged everyone to experiment with the animation program for use in their classroom.

A diagram of the iFly tunnel

John Boyce, iFly

John is the educational director for iFly in Union City, CA. John gave us a brief introduction of the facility and the science behind it. Field Trips with the program can be organized via John and previewed on the education portionof their website. If you book a field trip by Thanksgiving, you might win a free visit! Be sure to email John directly for more information: johnb@iflysfbay.com

Michael Walks

Michael Boykin, GVHS

Michael demonstrated a way of showing a real simple action explained in terms of Physics. He demonstrated how even walking is a complex set of procedural steps. He leads students to the idea that muscles are on the back of the body and the secret is pushing back against the floor in order to be propelled forward which can be related to Newton’s Third Law. Michael reminded us that getting up on the table or doing something silly is always going to get and keep your students’ attention.

Dean Baird, Rio Americano High School

Dean shared his “Scientists Valentines and “Back Masking” which involves playing a song backwards and hearing “secret messages.” Upon first listening, no one can discern any words but when the “secret message” lyrics are shown suddenly everyone can hear it. For more information can be found at www.JeffMilner.com/backmasking.

Bree Barnett Dreyfuss, Amador Valley High School

Bree suggested reading “The Pluto Files” by Neil de Grasse Tyson and using it with an astronomy unit to discuss the scientific process and classification of objects in the solar system. There was a NOVA Special and supporting material online as well.

Bree also previewed her work with Jon Brix on using laboratory notebooks from bound composition books in their Conceptual Physics course. If the experiment is successful this year she plans on offering a workshop at the Spring meeting, April 20 & 21, at Lake Tahoe.

Be sure to like NCNAAPT on Facebook as well!

Gunjan (aka Dr. G)

Dr. G demonstrated her programs that teach Physics to younger students using a volunteer child.

Leanna Felardo, Oroville High School

Leanna asked everyone to bring mystery equipment to the Spring meeting in Tahoe. She will be leading a workshop meant to  help identify unknown material and its use. You can also email Leanne with a photo of your mystery equipment at LFelardo@ouhsd.org.

Brian demos Torque

Brian Bellis, Hoover High School

Brian shared how he uses with a large wood spool to demonstrate torque. Brian also demonstrated an optical illusion of a little Red Dragon that he found online and folded up. The eyes of the little red dragon follow you as it moves.

Joel Rosenberg, Lawrence Hall of Science

Joel explained the process behind the CELL (Clean Energy Learning and Leadership) program. There is a visual representation of Power as the area of a box with the voltage representing the width and the current representing the height of a rectangle.

Peng Yav, Sebrante, IISME

Peng shared the details of the IISME summer program. Teachers have the opportunity to work in the industry during the summer to gain experience and money. The applications for the summer program are due this month! To learn more about Industry Initiatives for Science and Math Education (IISME) contact:

Shari Liss, Education Director at sliss@iisme.org  and (408)553-3179

Christina O’Guinn, Education Manager at coguinn@iisme.org and (408)553-2266

Fall Conference 2011 Invited Speaker

We are pleased to announce that the invited speaker for our Fall 2011 Conference will be UC Berkeley’s own Richard Muller. Muller is a professor of the popular “Physics for Future Presidents” class at UC Berkeley and author of a popular book of the same name. Muller is also a Faculty Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and associated with the Institute for Nuclear and Particle Astrophysics. Read more about Muller’s career, interests and most recent book, “The Instant Physicist,” on his website.

Save the Date for the UC Berkeley Physics Department Demo Show Friday Nov. 4th and the section Conference on Nov. 5th!