February 1, 2019

Happy Friday! Some of us are at a contest today, so check out the following:

Period 3-4, 8-9
Be sure to have what you need for the magnet lab, with the exception of #6. If you have not yet done so, turn in the lab. Also turn in the magnetic domain and earth magnetic field sheets in the pack from early this week.

Check out two videos. One is on the earth's magnetic field. The second is on charged particles moving through magnetic fields. The symbol for a magnetic field strength is B, and the unit for magnetic field strength is a Tesla (1 Tesla is a really strong field...our big magnet is a fraction of a Tesla). Take notes on all this. You will start to use cross products as well as right-hand rules to figure out the direction particles get pushed by magnetic forces. Circular motion results from these cross product forces, so work together to try and figure out a few things.

Be sure to get a page with some practice problems from the book. It uses this notion of circular motion of particles in a magnetic field (or B-field). We are using mv^2/R = qvBsin(theta). In many cases the angle between velocity and the B-field will be 90-degrees, so the sine will often be 1.
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Period 5
If your coaster group has not yet shared the summary paper for your coaster, please do so today. We are into energy, and the BIG idea we've been introducing is conservation of energy - perhaps the single most important concept in science, and a reason why we are alive. Energy can transform from one type into another, such as potential energy (due to height) converting back and forth into kinetic energy as something moves up and down hills on a roller coaster, or flies through the air (slows as it rises, with KE => PE; or speeds up as it falls, with PE => KE).

To see examples of the math behind conservation, check out this Khan Academy video on conservation of energy. This one shows basic PE-KE conversions, similar to what you had with your coaster. Remember conservation means "energy can be neither created nor destroyed, just transformed from one type to another" if there is nothing else adding or taking energy away from you (such as someone pushing or pulling an object, and forcing it to speed up or slow down). Do take notes on the video so you have a numerical example of how to deal with conservation.

From the video, then try to complete the conservation of energy sheet you got on Tuesday. Just remember in all the examples shown, the TOTAL energy stays the same, where Total E = PE + KE. Work together and talk things through based on the video example. If you complete it, turn it in before leaving and we will pick this up next week! Thanks!

As stated in Jurassic park, "Life finds a way"

Going along with the previous post, about the number of stars, and presumably the number of planets, in the universe has increased by an order of magnitude, check out the article stating how incredibly resilient life is (at least single-celled life forms like bacteria) below ground.

Here is the Jurassic Park scene!

New Galaxy survey that is difficult to comprehend!!

There are a few more galaxies in our universe than we thought!  The numbers are difficult to imagine.

Very good simulation for Binary Systems

Check this out, and play with the slider bars in the binary simulation - vary the masses and eccentricity, so you can see both circular and elliptical binary orbits! Thank you, UCLA, for the sim.

Happy New Year to all!

Now that we are on winter break, I hope everyone is sleeping in, enjoying time with family and friends, and will have a safe and amazing New Year celebration in just a few days!! See everyone next year!!

For today

Period 3-4, 8-9:

Please watch a TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson, related to education. I will be really interested in your opinions on this tomorrow. I will also mention why this is coming up at this time!

The last of the new material for the semester is something called dielectrics, which are insulating materials filling the gaps of capacitors. Please check out this video to see what it is all about, and try the practice problems together - these are not too terrible once you get the hang of them!  If any spare time, can work on other HW sets or other classes. Happy Thursday, will miss you today!

Congratulations to the Class of 2019 Top 50 Finalists in the Global Teacher Prize!

The Top 50 Finalists in the Global Teacher Prize, run by the Varkey Foundation (headquarters in London), were just announced. One of these fabulous teachers, who were selected from tens of thousands of nominations from over 170 countries, will win a $1 million prize in March. These 50 are also now Varkey Teacher Ambassadors, which is a group dedicated to promoting the teaching profession and educational programs and advocacy on a global scale. As a three-year member of the VTA Advisory Board, I will have the distinct pleasure of welcoming the new finalists into this program in Dubai in March. There is no group of educators like this on the planet, and being the 5th year of the program, we have nearly 250 teacher ambassadors.

Here are the 100 VTAs who were in Dubai in March, 2018.

Article about the ETHS Research Center

The Society for Science and the Public, a Washington, DC, non-profit that runs a variety of major STEM programs including the Science Talent Search (the 'Nobel Prize of high school'), has done a piece on the ETHS Research Center. The most important aspect of this is to provide students with opportunities for independent research, but also to share our ideas and resources with the tens of thousands of high schools where these opportunities do not exist. This includes schools in other countries. This is the longer-term goal we have in mind as we begin to get things going with the facility.

Links for class

For periods 3-4, 8-9 check out a short video about how a nuclear power plant works. This is a direct application of E = mc^2 in power production for many parts of the world, including about 20% of U.S. energy production. Keep track of the main components of the power plant, and the general process of converting nuclear energy (mass converting to energy) into electrical energy. In honor of power, check out a second video on the world's most powerful machines - these are engineering marvels!


For period 5, check out a short video on the life cycles of stars. Take notes on the different types of stars and, especially, on how they die. Stars are one of the ultimate examples of what the force of gravity can do on huge scales. Remember, gravity is actually the weakest force for most objects. We need huge amounts of mass to create gravity strong enough to be noticeable. Also note how the elements of the periodic table, and that we are made from, are created within stars!

Fermilab's TARGET Summer Program - Apps open Dec. 17

Fermilab has done its TARGET Summer Program for high school students of color and women for 40 years, and the application process begins Dec. 17. The deadline is February 1, 2019. If you enjoy the weird, modern physics material, this is one of the world's labs dedicated to it on the particle, relativity and quantum sides!