The American Association of Physics Teachers, Northern California/Nevada Section
Further updates and links to come… If you have any corrections please let the secretary know.
Tom Woosnam , Crystal Springs Uplands School
Tom discussed the Perimeter Institute; more information is available here: Perimeter Institute Catalogue (1)
Don Rathjen, Exploratorium Continue reading “Spring 2013 Share n’ Tell”
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
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!
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.