The American Association of Physics Teachers, Northern California/Nevada Section
The Physics Teacher Education Coalition (PTEC) has a great new map of professional development opportunities across the US. Use the map to find professional development opportunities for physics and astronomy inservice and preservice teachers: http://www.ptec.org/pd/
Notes from the Spring Conference on April 23rd, 2011 are posted with links that are currently available. If you need anything corrected or would like to add anything to a post, please email Bree at Secretary@NCNAAPT.org.
If you were at the conference and would like to print out a certificate for your Professional Development records, you can download it here as a Document or a pdf.
A note from our Program Chair, Paul Robinson, about our meeting:
“AAPT’ers,
“Teaching Strategies for Conceptual Physics for Freshman”
Bree Barnett Dreyfuss and Jon Brix
Amador Valley High School, Pleasanton, CA
Jon and Bree discussed several strategies for teaching freshmen Physics:
Jon and Bree discussed difficulties in teaching the class due to low math skills, special needs students, varying grade levels, etc. The class requires a variety of strategies and resources in order to keep them engaged. Additional resources will be available on Bree’s website.
“Developing Some of the Skills and Values Needed for Success in Introductory Physics”
Jeff Phillips, President of SCAAPT
Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA
Jeff discussed data that suggests that students that develop their own understanding of concepts through exploration and discussion increases their understanding. Data was collected throughout the college and analyzed to show this improvement; some data was taken from the Lawson Test. Interesting trends include students believing that they are either “smart” or “dumb” and that the method will not change that. Much of the class time has been replaced with teaching metacognitive skills and problem solving skills. Some activities involve the students determining the variables in the problems. For example, students are handed several different objects with different radii, mass, shapes, etc. to determine what affects the moment of inertia.
“The Law of Refraction in the Tenth Century”
Duygu Demirlioglu, Holy Names University, Oakland, CA
Consider a standard problem: given a light ray, incident in some direction on the flat interface between two transparent media, find the direction of the refracted ray. A straightforward and quite trivial application of Snell’s Law yields the solution. Suppose, however, that you are living a thousand years ago. All you have is a ruler—no protractor, no calculator, and no table of sines. A geometric law of refraction—found in the tenth century but largely unknown in the West—will be presented. This approach suffices to solve all the refraction problems (such as critical angle, apparent depth, and lensmaker’s formula) encountered in any physics textbook. It requires hands-on drawing, but no knowledge of trigonometry, or even much geometry; it allows students to understand the physics with very little mathematics.
“Chasing Shadows: NASA’s Kepler Mission”
Edna DeVore, SETI Institute, Mountain View, CA
An updated version of “Transit Tracks” activity where students interpret light curves to determine the period and the size of the transiting planet will be presented.
Paul Doherty & Don Rathjen
Paul gave us a brief history of the Exploratorium and its growth over the years. Participants were then split into two groups to explore the Exploratorium’s favorite exhibits. Don and Paul gave tours of the museum and met back together for one big demonstration. Highlights include exploring the reflective properties of the dome at the Palace of Fine Arts and the hidden resonance tube inside one of its pillars. Paul demonstrated the “whirly” sound resonance tube in a larger-than-normal format. A video will be available once its edited.
Adam Weiner, Bishop School in La Jolla, CA
Adam uses movie clips to teach traditional problems to engage students in the problem. (book available for signing) Some movies are good to show to explore “good science” and data can be collected from the clips in order to create problems. Others are examples of “bad science” and can be used to generate discussions about what is wrong based on the science students know. Adam likes action movies such as Spiderman, Spiderman 2, Spiderman 3, XXX, 2001: Space Odyssey, etc.
Website: www.hollywoodmoviephysics.com