Saturday Program

Session A: Darwin Hall, Room 108

Session B: Darwin Hall, Room 2

2:30   "Bernoulli in Principle: Is fluid pressure really lower in moving fluids?"

Evan Jones, Sierra College, Emeritus
revwin@yahoo.com

A teacher blows between two suspended balloons; they come together. The myth persists that the pressure of a free stream fluid is thereby shown to be lower than the pressure of the surrounding stationary fluid. Using commonly performed experiments and purported "theory", I will show how many assertions about Bernoulli's principle are not correct. The common mis-application of the Bernoulli principle in free stream cases will be demonstrated.

2:30   "Inter-Nuclear Potential Energy Graphs - Beyond Balancing Reaction Equations and Calculating Mass Defects in Analyzing Fusion, Fission, and Alpha Decay Processes"

Patrick M. Len, Cosumnes River College
pml@waiferx.com

Many textbooks provide only a cursory approach to analyzing nuclear processes, primarily based on balancing reaction equations and calculating mass defects. Inter-nuclear potential energy graphs can incorporate these simple fundamental concepts as well as more complex effects to describe fusion, fission, and alpha decay in more detail.

2:50   "Lessons from Chernobyl"

Charles Hunt, American River College
jnrhunt@garlic.com

Seventeen years after the world's worst nuclear power plant accident; what actually happened, what were the short and long term effects, and what did the accident teach us about the safety of nuclear power?

2:50   "F = ma and E&M using Python/VPython"

Matthew Moelter, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo
mmoelter@calpoly.edu

Electric and magnetic fields and their associated phenomena are some of the most challenging concepts in the introductory sequence. We discuss how the Python language and the VPython module combine to make a powerful tool for creating three-dimensional visualizations of fields and phenomena in electromagnetism. Some typical fields and the motion of a charge near a fixed dipole will be presented.

3:10   "Teacher Research and Cosmic Rays"

Andria Erzberger, LBNL
alerzberger@lbl.gov

High school teachers participate in particle physics research at universities and labs through NSF- and DOE-funded QuarkNet. Many of these teachers take high energy physics to their classrooms by using cosmic ray detectors. A portable cosmic ray detector and some experiments will be demonstrated.

3:10   "Springs, Series, and Slinkies"

Bryan Cooley, Epistemological Engineering
bryancooley@mindspring.com

After a brief exploration of tension springs, alone and in series, we will move onto the question of the length of a hanging slinky - a tension spring with non-negligible mass. I will predict and apply mathematical models to fit data taken from a hanging slinky.

3:30   "Strategies in Web-Based Homework Assignments"

John Walkup, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
jwalkup@calpoly.edu

Web-based homework services greatly automate the assigning and grading of homework, reducing academic workload for introductory courses. The homework service provided by the University of Texas (https://hw.utexas.edu/hw.html) that is not only easy to use and administrate, but also provides sophisticated feedback to help instructors isolate student difficulties and is free. I will discuss how to harvest the benefits and overcome the shortcomings of online homework services.

3:30   "How Big is a Photon"

Phil Gash, Cal State, Chico
pgash@operamail.com

 While dissertating about light, photons, quanta and energy packets during a lecture, a student asked me just how big are photons ? I didn't know. This simple question stimulated me to re-think the basic properties of photons. Its minimum length depends upon the photon's wavelength and bandwidth. IR, optical, ultraviolet, x-ray and nuclear photons will be discussed.

3:50   "Physics Issues in Homeland Security"

Xavier K. Maruyama, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey
maruyama@nps.navy.mil

We are bombarded with concerns about Homeland Security. Discussion on airport security, parking perimeters, duct tape, etc. dominate the 10 o'clock news. The average reader gains very little knowledge from either popular press or technical accounts. The gap to be filled by physics instructors is to provide sufficient technical grasp so that basic physics bridges the chasm between the superficial and detail overload. Physics and chemistry issues related to explosive detection, e.g. metal detectors, x-rays, vapor analysis, neutron based techniques, will be presented.

3:50   "NASA GLAST EPO"

Lynn Cominsky and Sarah Silva Sonoma State University Education and Public Outreach Group
lynn.cominsky@sonoma.edu and sarah@universe.sonoma.edu

 The Education and Public Outreach (EPO) group at Sonoma State University (SSU) will present two separate activities designed to capture the excitement of this mission and use it to engage students in learning math and science: "Far Out Math!" (developed by the TOPS Learning Systems) and "Active Galaxies", a set of activities designed by the SSU EPO group. Both activities are for grades 9-12, and conform to national science and math standards. Participants will receive free NASA materials.

4:10   "The Physics of Cell Polarization"

David Blackman, UC Berkeley, retired
gribear@mind.net

Two currents dominate cell polarization. First, the passive current is governed by the Hamiltonian of the partition function. The second, the active transport is governed by the thermodynamics of the sodium pump. The physics of these two systems will be compared. Some very simple assumptions underpin this treatment: passive current is similar to a capacitive discharge; the change in membrane potential is proportional to the signal observed externally.

4:10   "Space Mysteries: Starmarket"

Philip Plait and Tim Graves, Education and Public Outreach Group, SSU
phil@universe.sonoma.edu and gravest@universe.sonoma.edu

 "Your web-based investigation, Space Sleuth, will involve interviews with real scientists, real data from various NASA observatories, and will test your abilities to plot and analyze data. Along the way you'll be doing science by inquiry, build up standards-based knowledge, and even have some fun. Other mysteries await you as well; one involves decoding what might be alien signals arriving from space, and another about helping Ace Reporter Parnell escape disaster on the planet 2-Alpha."

4:30   "Unmasking Data: Finding Hidden Phenomena in the Numbers"

Tim Erickson, Epistemological Engineering
tim@eeps.com

I use several data analysis tools, especially residual plots, to see structure in data that, at first glance, is not apparent. We'll apply mathematical models to data, discover where the models work, and analyze how models can go wrong. Data include splits from sprints, heating and cooling, falling balloons, and more.