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Tuesday, January 30, 2018

From Kenya!

Using donations from some wonderful Wildkits, as well as uniforms donated by a Canadian soccer team (contacted by my friend and colleague Mark Reid), students at Makonjemare School in rural Kenya (near Kilifi, Kenya) have some new sporting gear, including soccer and volley balls. A sincere thank you to those who helped with this!!! As their teacher, Jacqueline Jumbe-Kehura told me, "Asante sana!" which is "Thank you very much" in Kiswahili.





Sunday, January 28, 2018

Methods being used to make AI creative

Getting a computer to be creative, to actually come up with its own, unique "thoughts" that it was not pre-programmed to do, is an enormous challenge for past artificial intelligence machines. But as is the case for most aspects of AI, progress has been made at impressive rates. Check out some of the methods being used for creative AI.

Free Online Physics Course, Textbook

Check out Ck-12, and the free, online physics course and textbook. It has simulations, sample videos, and practice problems for the major topics in physics! There are also study guides for all topics. A wonderful supplement for what we do in class, or something to use if you are interested in topics we don't have time to study. You can also get a free account to access all the resources at CK-12; just use your student email, so you can access things from school.

Friday, January 26, 2018

Link to Infographic for MLA Citations

For any type of research paper, if you are using MLA citation formats, there are some really nice templates for different types of resources. Check them out if you ever forget or aren't quite sure.

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

For Wednesday

I am terribly sorry for missing again, but let's make the most of it. I'll make it up somehow.

Periods 3-4, 8-9:

Now that all the groups have observations and some data for RC circuits, we want to get a sense of the theory and math behind them. There are two cases for RC circuits in series: connecting a battery and charging the capacitor, and having a charged capacitor and then removing the battery so the capacitor discharges. Check out the following videos on your Chromebooks and take notes...you probably have guessed that, yes, we will all need to be able to do these derivations. Keep in mind that, for whatever reason, this is the same math that we used last year with air friction!

Watch this for CHARGING capacitors.  Watch this for DISCHARGING capacitors.

After watching these, you can complete the lab (theory into reality, last part). After receiving the RC packets, give a try on the two AP problems on the second and third pages (2002, 2003).  If you have spare time, see what you think of the derivative calculator in the previous post....looks pretty cool.


Period 6:

We will start the process for our bridges. First, decide on who you will work with. To maximize your hands-on experience and have a chance to still talk through designs, we will work in pairs. However, you do have the option of working on your own if you wish to try.

Next, you have the period to go through the information passed out yesterday. Use the information for the various forces bridges experience, such as tension, stress, strain, compression, and so on - you will need to be able to define these. Then work on reaching a decision of design. Remember the specifications: the bridge will need to be between 30 cm and 40 cm in length, and span a 30 cm gap. Feel free to look online at designs, there should be lots of information since there are numerous bridge building contests around the country.

Keep in mind you will need to explain to Doc V and the class why you chose the design you ultimately make (think in terms of how forces are distributed in order to make the bridge stronger).

Monday, January 15, 2018

Derivative Calculator website - give it a try, does it help you conceptually seeing the graphs?

A very cool site I just became aware of is called Derivative Calculator. You can type in any function, and it will provide the derivative function and both graphs. Not only that, it will find roots of your function, and also show steps of how it got the derivative. It can find higher order derivatives, as well!

This could be really useful for any of us to gain further conceptual understanding of derivatives, as well as allow us to check ourselves with more complex functions, or simply find the derivative of really complex functions we don't see in classes. Try it out!!

Thursday, January 11, 2018

For 2nd period

Thank you for helping out on this senior project!

The first Google form for the experiment is here.

The second form is here.

The final survey is here.