October 30

Periods 3-4, 8-9
As necessary, get a couple partners and go through the last quizzam. Solutions are in the Newton's Laws folder on our school site. Make any corrections and write down any questions that you may have on anything, so we can be sure to fix it up.

Then let's get back into circular motion. Watch and take notes on a video of examples of horizontal and vertical situations. There is a second one on the roller coaster loop the loop. With these, be sure to have our packet and you can try and finish before leaving:
          Chap. 5 #42, 44, 46, 47

Period 5
My apologies for being out today. We are going to start using one of the great human missions that is under development as a theme for much of the physics we will think about the rest of the year - human settlement of space, meaning sending people to the moon and to Mars. To get started, Newton's laws will play the single biggest role in understanding how this will work. Please watch and take good notes on a couple videos:
How rockets work (3rd law is key, action-reaction)
Sending humans to Mars - how will we do it  pick out what you consider to be the big challenges and key ideas to think about for such a mission. The panelists talk about numerous aspects of things to think about for this mission, which is likely the most ambitious project in human history! Incredible complexity to figure out and conquer!

Check out Video on NON-Gauss method

As we look to make things a bit more realistic, such as charged sticks from our past labs that actually have ends, we need to use a different approach than Gauss's law, which we can only use as an approximation for this like a stick. Check out this video (we'll call it NON-Gauss), which outlines what we'll get into tomorrow.

World's heaviest calibrated weight: 1,000,000 pounds (exactly!)

Check out this video, courtesy of Shantelle G., of the world's heaviest calibrated weight...it is exactly 1,000,000.0 pounds. Pretty crazy!!

GoFundMe site for Malawi donations

If you wish to share the GoFundMe link on your social media networks, it is:
https://www.gofundme.com/ethsformalawi

The video is here.

THANKS!!!

For Monday, Sept. 24

Happy Monday, everyone! 

Periods 3-4, 8-9

Reach consensus on answers and thought process for HW sets - we've got plenty of white boards, just need a few volunteers to show us what you did and talk it through.

After that, try the Barrons review set in the Electrostatics folder on Doc V's school web site. Solutions are in there if you scroll down. In the folder is also a file with video links relevant to electrostatics, in case you need to check on anything. Also plenty of worked examples in Chapters 21-23. Anything related to point charges and thin shells with Gauss's law is fair game on Tuesday.

If you want to meet the Dean of Engineering at Penn State, and a former Chem/Phys student, Dr. Justin Schwartz, stop in at 7:45 am Tuesday!! 

Period 5

With your Chromebooks, go to a site with links to ActivPhysics computer simulations. Click on Newton's laws. Under Describing Motion, open up simulation 1.2, Analyzing motion using graphs. Follow along with the instructions, and keep track of things and take notes in your notebook. It will ask you to open up a simulation and run it, and see what a position vs time graph looks like for the motion of a car. Start making the connection between a motion and the corresponding motion graph. As you go along, they will add a graph for velocity vs time, and finally acceleration vs time. You will be using these as a model/example to then try simulation 1.3, Predicting motion from graphs.

In 1.3, again, follow along. It will have you run an initial simulation, which shows nothing but the position vs time graph for some car motion. You will need to predict, based on what you learned and saw in simulation 1.2, what the motion of the car is, as well as what the velocity and acceleration graphs look like. Sketch out what you think the graphs should look like!
Then, open the second simulation of the problem and run it. This will show everything, and you can check to see if you are correct with the motion as well as the graphs! If you are incorrect, draw the graphs and motion that are shown, near your predictions. We can go through these Tuesday to see if we can make corrections in your thinking, if necessary.

Talk these through with a partner if you wish. The goal is to make connection between real motions and how these motion quantities are related to the motions.

If anyone is interested in engineering, please feel free to come in at 7:45 am Tuesday morning to meet a former student, who is Dean of Engineering at Penn State University! Should be interesting!

Astrophysics lecture at NU, Oct 11

If you are a fan of astronomy and astrophysics, go to a free public lecture on October 11 at NU. A very good friend of Doc V's, Vicky Kalogera, is giving a general talk on the past 10 years of research and discoveries made by CIERA personnel. Vicky is a senior scientist on LIGO, which discovered gravitational waves a couple years ago, and will give a stellar talk! Details below:

Event Description

Celebrate TEN YEARS OF ASTRONOMY DISCOVERIES by the faculty, postdocs, and students of CIERA, Northwestern’s astronomy research center. Learn how our understanding of the lives of stars and their influence on the Cosmos has changed over the past ten years. The story will range from how stars live and die, to how we study their remains with light and gravity, in order to untangle the evolution of the galaxy and Universe. The lecture will feature the core stories of how our work in CIERA has helped push those frontiers of understanding. Stay after the lecture for a special “Ask an Astronomer” meet-and-greet with Northwestern astronomers.

Speaker

Professor Vicky Kalogera

Daniel I. Linzer Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy, Northwestern University

Director, Center of Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA)

Event Information

Northwestern University's Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) Presents: THE CIERA 10th ANNUAL PUBLIC LECTURE

-- Free and open to the public.

-- Content tailored to a general audience -- all are welcome!

-- RSVP Requested

-- Campus parking lots are unrestricted in the evenings.

Event date & time

Thursday, October 11, 2018

5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

Location & nearest public transportation

Cahn Auditorium, 600 Emerson Street, Evanston, IL 60208

Cross streets: Chicago Ave. & Sheridan Rd.

Public transit: Purple Line, Davis Station

Tickets

Free, Open to the Public, RSVP Requested: http://www.alumni.northwestern.edu/CIERAten

  

Uses of Research Center - hoping for everyone to get involved in something!

The new research center space is to be available to any student in the school who wants to do independent work in STEM. This includes original research work outside of professional labs and CABS work, but can include many more activities.

One of Doc V's goals is for every one of you to have the opportunity to pursue personal interests and curiosities throughout the year. Check out the above link and just let him know what you want to try, and we'll chat and figure something out! Have fun with all this!  :-)

Seeing how a secant line 'becomes' a tangent line, using a limit

Desmos has a very nice Applet that allows us to play with a curve and its secant and tangent lines. We can play with it to see what needs to be done, using the notion of a limit, to get a secant line to become a tangent line. Tangent lines define the slope of a curve at a specific point on that curve, and is the heart and soul of derivatives (differential calculus)!

If you are not familiar with it, Desmos is one of the good math sites for graphing and manipulating just about any function or dataset you will ever see.

What does good "Critical Thinking" look like?

Any survey of employers, such as CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and others, of characteristics they are looking for from today's students, in the top 3 will be 'critical thinking.' In general, this is being able to take a complex problem or situation and think it through logically and with an open mind, finding and using evidence to support whatever answer or conclusion you come up with for that problem. It is also being able to research the problem using credible, reliable sources of information to do so.

Here is a pretty good guide or rubric to determine whether you are doing a good job with critical thinking, on a 4-point scale:

1. does not contribute to the solution, using opinion instead of independent evidence;
2. answers question but without justification, agree/disagree but without saying why, incomplete sentences/thoughts and punctuation;
3. justify your position, opinion or answer to the problem, say why you agree or disagree, using complete sentences and thoughts;
4. justify your position, opinion or answer using text evidence (from credible, reliable sources) and real-world examples, ask questions of others, use complete sentences and thoughts with correct punctuation and grammar

Having Cellphones and Laptops out during class leads to less learning, lower scores

What is more or less common sense, a new study shows significant drops in learning when students are allowed to have cellphones and laptops out during class. And this happens not only to those students using personal devices, it also affects students who do not have their devices out.

This matches numerous personal anecdotes, and seems to match common sense. Many teens and college students believe they are able to multi-task, and state that personal devices do not affect how effective they are as they split attention, but this study shows pretty conclusively this belief is incorrect.

Now in my classes, I want cellphones and Chromebooks away most of the time. There IS a time and place for devices, depending on the nature of the activity we are doing. Also, do not forget there are studies that show significant decreases in scores and learning comprehension for those students who take notes on a laptop compared to those who write out notes by hand.

Tech is wonderful in so many ways, but we are finding out 'old school' methods should NOT all be thrown out quite yet!