I did this in the fall and it was a lot of fun! Register as a teacher (to adopt a physicist) or as a physicist (to be adopted). This is an informal dialogue between physicists and high school students to give students a taste of what it’s like to be a physicist. If you’re a teacher — sign up and adopt one of us (you can adopt me!). You can also adopt the physicist at Swans on Tea.
Registration is now open for the Spring 2009 session of Adopt-a-Physicist! www.adoptaphysicist.org .
Help high school students explore what it’s really like to be a physicist – consider participating in Adopt-a-Physicist! In this program, people with physics degrees (at any level) are “adopted” by high school classes interested in finding out about the careers, educational backgrounds, and lives of real physicists.
Physicists are responsible for creating a profile (takes 10-20 minutes) and hosting one online discussion forum for a 3-week period (estimated to take 2-3 hours per week). All communication will take place on the forum.
Physicists in traditional careers AND “hidden physicists” welcome!
Registration for the next 3-week session begins on March 31, with the forums open April 13 – May 1. For information and to register, visit www.adoptaphysicist.org .
From Bell_witch http://bell-witch.livejournal.com/
I am a science education and communications consultant -- view my website for my full range of services.
What an appropriate title. I am posting the very last episode of my Science Teaching Tips podcast on Podomatic, and at the same time it has been given new life over at the Exploratorium Teacher Institute website!
Dying to know whether something’s positively or negatively charged? TI staff educator Modesto Tamez explains an easy – and dirt cheap – way to probe the electric charge of the world.
Visit the new beautiful webhome of the series. Go check it out, and subscribe to get each new podcast episode — full of the accumulated wisdom of the wonderfully creative folks over at the Exploratorium’s Teacher Institute (where I had the honor and delight of working for about 2 years).
I am a science education and communication consultant — see http://sciencegeekgirl.com for more information about my services.
I am a science education and communications consultant -- view my website for my full range of services.
Hey guys, I’m featured as one of the physicists for Meet the Physicists on the Year of Science site. The site is for the Celebrate Physics and Technology month ( which was March, so it’s about over now), and you can submit your questions to me and other physicists on the site. I should have posted it earlier, since it looks like it’s about over now, but hey, go ahead and give it a try. Keep it clean!
The site has some other stuff for Physics and Technology month, like some good question (like the physics of a flapping flag,or how food coloring spreads).
The Year of Science is a grassroots celebration of science across the country for 2009. I’m just now getting a handle on the things that they’re doing. One of the useful things is to find science events in your area. Check it out at Year of Science.
I am a science education and communications consultant -- view my website for my full range of services.
As summer approaches, everyone’s vying for teachers’ time. A bunch of deadlines have already passed, but there’s still time to sign up for several great programs.
Teacher Institute at the Exploratorium
Application deadline April 1 — soon! I can’t even describe how much this institute will change your teaching — I worked with the Teacher Institute for 2 summers, and it transformed me. Teachers have nothing but good things to say about it. Amazing program! Here’s more info:
Our institutes focus on physics, middle-high school general science, life science and mathematics and support the content and pedagogy described in the National and California State Standards. After completing this 4-week institute, you become an alumnus of the Teacher Institute and are eligible to attend other workshops. The library also becomes available for project research.
Participants are required to study at the Exploratorium for five-and-one-half hours each day, Monday through Friday, for four weeks. Each participant is awarded a stipend of $1000 after completion. In the past years, three units of credit from San Francisco State University or six units of graduate credit from University of the Pacific were awarded through the program. Registration and paying for university credit takes place during the Institute. We anticipate the same types of credit to be offered during Summer 2009.
The dates for Summer 2009 are from June 22nd to July 17th. This year’s applications are due back to us by April 1st and we let teachers know of their acceptance status by early May.
The ACS-Hach High School Chemistry Grant is awarded to teachers and institutions aiming to enhance the teaching and learning of high school chemistry. Applicants can receive up to $1,500 to support ideas that transform classroom learning and encourage student development. The deadline to apply is April 1, 2009. Notification letters will be emailed May 1. Google them for more info, or email b_hach @acs.org for the application.
Research Experiences for Teachers
PTEC, a project led by AAPT, the American Physical Society, and the American Institute of Physics, maintains a list of Research Experiences for Teachers, or RETs. These programs give in-service teachers an opportunity to spend part of their summer participating in cutting-edge physics research. http://www.aapt.org/aboutaapt/updates/March2009.cfm#PTEC
Modeling Workshops for Teachers
Modeling Workshops in high school physics, chemistry, and/or physical science will be held in summer 2009 in Arizona, California, Miami FL, Kansas, Maine, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Philadelphia PA, Pittsburgh PA, Tennessee, Dallas TX, and Wisconsin. Pending funding, also in Columbus
GA, Chicago, New Orleans, and Kansas City MO. Visit http://modeling.asu.edu for details. Click on “Modeling Workshops Nationwide in Summer 2009″.
Modeling Workshops are peer-led. Modeling Instruction is the only high school science program recognized by the U.S. Dept. of Education as EXEMPLARY. Stipends and/or free tuition are available for in-state teachers at most sites.
Teachers greatly value Modeling Instruction. Modelers from all over the
nation wrote:
In the one year that I have been modeling, I have seen wonderful results.
I love the modeling physics program and want to cheer for the difference
I saw in the understanding of my students when I implemented the Mechanics materials for the first time last year!
Modeling has changed the fundamental way I teach. I believe eventually, maybe even in our lifetimes, all science will be taught this way.
We have had 3 physics teachers and 5 chemistry teachers enhance their professional development at your ASU modeling workshops. Modeling has made a world of difference in our science courses.
In each workshop, teachers learn about the physics of weightlessness and what to expect on the zero gravity flight. They also design microgravity experiments that applied science, technology, engineering or mathematics principles to human activities in a weightless environment. During the weightless flight one or two weeks later, they conduct their experiments under the watchful eye of a video camera. Teachers then use their videotaped flight experience and the results of the experiments to help shape math, science, technology or engineering curricula at their home schools.
Their flight schedule for 2009 is below:
Albuquerque, New Mexico – Aug 22
Detroit, Michigan – Aug 1/Sept 24
Norwalk, CT – Aug 29
Washington, DC – Aug 15/Oct 2
2009 National Physics Teachers Workshop
“Nuclear Technology Addressing Worldwide Energy Demands”
This workshop is designed to provide teachers with the opportunity to increase their knowledge level on nuclear energy, meet and learn from the nuclear researchers, tour facilities, and interact with peers from across the country. As the United States’ lead laboratory for nuclear reactor research and development, the Idaho National Laboratory provides the ideal location for hosting this select nuclear topic workshop.
The following costs will be prepaid and/or reimbursed to selected attendees:
• Lodging and most meals (based on current U.S. General Services Administration schedules and guidelines)
• Workshop fees and materials
• Travel – Based on GSA lowest cost of travel rates.
Application deadline is April 4. Only 30 registrations will be accepted for the July 2009 workshop. Please view web address for details.
2009 Perimeter Institute Workshop
Free summer physics camps for teachers at Canada’s Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.
Please make sure that applications for the “Einstein Plus Teachers’ Workshop” reach us by Tuesday, March 31, 2009. Program dates for Einstein Plus are August 2 to August 8. Online applications are available.
If you have any questions, please email jtaylor at perimeterinstitute.ca or phone 519-569-7600 ext. 5080
Operation Biotechnology for Physics Teachers
The Biotechnology Institute, through its FIPSE Operation Biotechnology grant, still has openings for Physics teachers to attend the Conference on Biotechnology Education in May in Atlanta. The attached information describes the conference, its value to the teachers of $10,000 in items such as lodging, meals, up to $350 reimbursement on air travel, 2 days of wet labs, 1 day of best practice presentations, 1 day of tours and 1 day at the BIO conference. About all that is not paid is a substitute; it is a good deal.
A friend just pointed out an interesting misconception that I hadn’t thought about. When you inhale helium, your voice sounds higher. It turns out that your voice isn’t actually higher-pitched! At least, not in the way that we think it is. The reasoning is a little convoluted…. read on.
Here’s the common misconception: The speed of sound is faster in helium because it’s lighter than air (thanks to the commenter for correcting me that it’s not the density but the molecular weight of gas that is important here… see Wikipedia on speed of sound). So, they say, since the speed is faster, that means that the frequency of your voice has to increase to compensate if the wavelength remains the same. [remember, the speed of sound (meters/sec) = frequency (waves/sec) * wavelength (meters/wave)].
Or, another popular misconception is that frequency remains constant, but the wavelength goes up. When this long wavelength hits the air, it then gets converted into a higher frequency. (But if you do the math, you’ll find this logic is flawed, because it actually results in a lower frequency).
Here’s what actually happens, as far as I can figure.
You make sound with your vocal cords… or, more accurately, “vocal flaps” — they look like two fleshy lips slapping against each other rhythmically. See some video of vocal flaps here – look especially at the last one on the right. When you sing middle C, the vocal flaps vibrate together to make a mess of frequencies around middle C, and you change the shape of your mouth and throat to emphasize “middle C” out of the mess of different notes your vocal flaps are making.
In other words, the sound from our vocal flaps doesn’t make it directly to our ears. It resonates in our vocal tract, which picks out certain notes. This is sort of how if you yell into a big tunnel, the echo sounds rather low. That big tunnel “picks out” the low notes. This is why male and female voices sound different — our vocal flaps make the same jumble of notes when we sing or talk, but the vocal tract, or chamber, emphasizes the lower notes for men and the higher notes for women. You can see this if you get a man and a woman and have them sing the same note into a frequency analyzer — you’ll see the same spikes on the analyzer, but the woman will have stronger spikes in the higher frequencies and vice versa for the guy.
So, when your vocal tract is filled with helium, your vocal flaps make that same set of messy frequencies around middle C, but the vocal tract picks it up as a higher frequency. So, in this way, the pitch of your voice doesn’t change (it’s still middle C that you’re singing), but the timbre of your voice does — which frequencies are picked up. Faster speed of sound = higher frequency. (The wavelength is fixed by the size and shape of your mouth and throat). So, it’s true that what you’re hearing is a higher frequency, but the difference is in what happens to air in the chamber of your mouth, after you’ve produced the sound.
Here’s what the March 1987 edition of Scientific American says in an article titled “Sopranos of the Skies”:
When a soprano sings a high C, her vocal cords actually produce a broad band of frequencies. . . . If [she] inhales helium, her voice seems to rise in pitch not because her vocal cords vibrate faster in the less dense atmosphere (they do, but only slightly); rather, because sound travels almost twice as fast through helium as it does through nitrogen, the acoustic properties of the vocal tract change so that it resonates with and amplifies higher-frequency tones.
For those of you who like math:When your lungs are filled with air, and you sing middle C, it has a frequency of 261 hertz and the speed of sound in air is 333 m/s (that’s 770 mph!), with a wavelength of about 1.27 meters (or about 4 feet, neato). When you inhale helium, the speed of sound is faster (972 meters/sec) because helium is lighter than air. Well, if the frequency created by your vocal flaps is the same, and the speed of sound goes up, then the wavelength must also go up. Using speed = frequency * wavelength again, you can calculate that the wavelength of the “middle C” that you try to sing on helium is actually about 3.7 meters long.
But here’s the real puzzler! What happens when the sound leaves your helium-filled mouth and hits your ears? Why doesn’t that long wavelength just get downshifted to a shorter wavelength when it leaves your mouth and hits the air (so that you hear the regular “middle C” that the soprano was trying to make)? It’s because frequency has to stay the same, or “frequency is conserved”. If 300 pushes of air leave your mouth every second, then 300 pushes of air have to travel through the air outside your mouth as well or else you’ll get a traffic jam of air leaving your mouth (this is the same argument, roughly, as to why water has to leave a pipe at the same volume per second as it enters the pipe). Below is from the New Scientist:
Once sound leaves the mouth its frequency is fixed, so the sound arrives to you at the same pitch as it left the speaker. Imagine a roller coaster ride. The car speeds up and slows down as it goes around the track, but all cars follow exactly the same pattern. If one sets out every 30 seconds, they will reach the end at the same rate, whatever happens in between.
In stringed instruments, the pitch depends on the length, thickness and tension of the string, so the instrument is unaffected by the composition of the air. Releasing helium in the middle of an orchestra would therefore create havoc. The wind and brass would rise in pitch, while the pitch of the strings and percussion would remain more or less the same
Note that you can have all sorts of crazy fun by breathing in sulfur hexafluoride. Well, actually, don’t do it, but instead watch it in the below YouTube video.Sulfur hexafluoride is heavier than air, so it has the opposite effect. A balloon filled with sulfur hexafluoride feels heavy, like it’s filled with water or foam. And that’s why you shouldn’t do this at home — since it’s heavier than air, it sits in your lungs and you can’t expell it. You have to turn yourself upside down or over a chair for a few moments to get it out of your lungs.
I’ve inhaled sulfur hexafluoride and I have to say, it was one of the strangest sensations! It felt like I was trying to talk through mud.
Here’s another video that shows a neat demo about how heavy sulfur hexafluoride is. At the end they “float” a little aluminum boat on a “sea” of sulfur hexafluoride (which sits, invisibly, in a container. It’s a gas but doesn’t float away because it’s heavier than air). They then scoop some of the gas into the aluminum boat and you can see it slowly sink as it’s filled with the invisible gas….
I am a science education and communications consultant -- view my website for my full range of services.
This is so charming I can’t stand it. You get the periodic table, and on each element, you can click to get a video with a little experiment on that element, performed by a guy with a cute British accent. Check it out — The Periodic Table of Videos.
Here’s Gallium (the Gallium “Beating Heart” experiment).
And Rubidium (certainly he doesn’t really wear his hair that way all the time!). They sure know how to keep you watching to wait for the hammer to fall, so to speak!
I am a science education and communications consultant -- view my website for my full range of services.
As y’all know, I’m a big fan of the blogosphere. I recently ran across a couple blogs that I thought others might be interested in.
The Teaching Professor, by a retired professor of teaching and learning at Penn State (MaryEllen Weimer). Very good posts, on topics that we often discuss, such as self-assessment, and whether test anxiety hinders performance).
How We Learn – research and news on how we learn, by an associate professor of learning sciences at U. Washington. This is more geared to providing resources or links to news reports (Pew results, funding news, and links to new educational programs).
The Active Learning Carnivale – only posts once a month, and gathers some of the best stuff on the blogosphere relate to active learning. Written by a teacher, I’m unclear on her expertise, but her posts do highlight interesting articles elsewhere.
Cognitive Daily- Not always relevant to teaching, but always interesting. Tidbits from cognitive science, written by a professor of psychology.
If you spin around and around, why is it that you can feel a little sick? The answer lies in how we sense our balance, and an ancient disease of the gut. We get our sense of balance in large part from the vestibular system of the inner ear. A delicate little set of organs in there contain fluid, and having a good sense of balance requires that these “fluid spaces” be properly maintained. However, our balance is, of course, also determined by what we see (try standing on one leg with your eyes closed).
When you spin around, the fluid in your inner ear gets sloshed around, momentarily confusing that sense of balance. Your eyes tell you you’re standing still, but your inner ear tells you you’re still spinning. Your brain panics when it gets this disconnect between the messages from your inner ear and your eyes. That’s because this is one of the signs of botulism poisoning. Botulism affects the inner ear and can result in this kind of disorientation. So what does the body want to do? Vomit, to get out that nasty toxin.
You can get the same effect if your eyes tell you you’re moving (for instance, walk into a room where the walls appear to move) but your inner ear tells you you’re standing still.
I am a science education and communications consultant -- view my website for my full range of services.
In my previous post on The Burden of Proof (what does educational research tell us?), many of us started to discuss why do faculty choose to change their teaching, if they decide that they should? (The question of whether or not they should is left for another discussion, another day).
So, I’m sitting now in my favorite coffee shop, reading a fabulous book called Diffusion of Innovations by E. M. Rogers.
It’s a classic volume describing how some innovations do and don’t take, such as the Palm Pilot (it was great value for the money), rap music (it espoused the anti-establishment values of white youth), and the one-child-per-family law in China (it was mandated by the government).
In education, we can learn a lot from this change literature. I already am, in reading this book. There is no one recipe for successful change, it’s clear — the strategy and evaluation has to depend on the innovation at hand. But there are some common themes:
The innovation has to have some clear relative advantage over the old way of doing things. This is certainly one of the major hurdles we face in educational innovation. It’s hard to assess the impact of pedagogical changes, and even then, many instructors don’t feel an emotional tug to try something new. They just aren’t convinced, in their deepest self of selves, that this is a positive change.
Another form of relative advantage is whether it’s easier and faster to do things in the new way. Rogers cites this as one reason why a new method soil testing (the N-Trak) failed — it was more work for farmers at an already busy time of the year, even though it saved them money and helped the environment because they didn’t overapply nitrogen fertilizer. The PhD’s developing the new tool thought that the advantage would be obvious to farmers — they didn’t consult with the farmers to see how to develop it to best suit their needs. In education, of course, we have to work directly with teachers and other potential adopters of the change we want to see, to create programs that take into account the political nature of change. Sometimes we have to sacrifice the perfect for the good.
Economic factors are also important, of course — if it costs too much, people won’t buy it, like VCRs which originally sold for $1200 in 1980 weren’t adopted until the price dropped to $50 in 2002. So the same should be true of educational innovations — if we suggest creating an entirely new classroom structure, or purchasing technology, which has a burdensome cost, then the chances of it being adopted are slim.
The innovation also has to be compatible with a person’s values, beliefs, and needs. For example, the famous “miracle” rice bred by the Interational Rice Research Institute failed when it was adopted in the market in the Phillippines, because it didn’t “taste right,” even though it had much increased yields over traditional varieties. How many of our educational innovations don’t “taste right” to faculty? How can we design innovations that work in their particular culture, or that they can adopt to their needs?
Similarly, innovations have to be compatible with a person’s previous ideas. We understand new ideas in light of things that are already familiar. In the case of education, the “familiar” is often the standard traditional “lecture at the blackboard” style. That’s why I think clickers can be a really useful form of innovation — we can easily see how clickers can be incorporated and support the existing lecture format, in a way that extends the familiar model, instead of doing away with it. “The more compatible an innovation is, the less of a change in behavior it represents,” writes Rogers. “How useful, then, is the introduction of a very highly compatible innovation? Quite useful, perhaps, if the compatible innovation is seen as the first step in a cluster of innovations that are to be introduced sequentially.” Today — clickers. Tomorrow — the world!
Compatibility with needs is probably one of the more important considerations for educational change. “Change agents must have a high degree of empathy and rapport with their clients in order to assess their needs accurately,” writes Rogers.
Potential adopters may not recognize that they have a need for an innovation until they become aware of the new idea or its consequences. Change agents may seek to generate needs among their clients, but this must be done carefull or else the felt needs upon which a diffusion campaign is based may be a reflection only of the change agent’s needs, rather than those of the clients.
In the Physics Education Research community, this difficulty has already been documented. Faculty feel that education researchers are foisting their ideas upon them, and telling them that they are teaching “the wrong way.” For more information on this research, go here or here for Henderson and Dancy’s work on divergent expectations. And here is a case study on how one institution ” involved its faculty in a systematic discussion about teaching and used the resulting feedback to alter policy. Faculty reactions, as captured in this case study, could be instructive in guiding instructional reforms at other research universities.”
Who is responsible for accepting the innovation is also an important factor. Rogers notes that changes adopted by an individual spread more rapidly than those that require an entire institution to sign on. That’s probably the case in education as well — the best changes are grassroots changes that spread among individuals in a social community. Yet, many changes also require institutional support, so the slower process of getting larger organizational structures to support educational changes is also important.
Other aspects of innovations that affect their adoption are:
Trialability (can you try it out first?)
Observability (do you see other people using it?)
Status (does the adoption make you look cool?)
Complexity (is it difficult to use?)
Think about a common innovation, like cell phones, and how well they fit into a lot of these above categories — everyone has them, they’re a status symbol, easy to use, and you can try your friend’s phone pretty easily… It’s easy to see how a lot of educational innovations aren’t as easily adopted. They’re a lot of work, it’s not obvious to many why we need them, and faculty trying new things are often lambasted by students and fellow instructors.
My readers were so helpful when I was writing my article on why physics teachers should read blogs, so I’m coming to you again for your expert advice on another short article. This one is on how elementary teachers can use podcasts in their classroom, and what podcasts they should consider listening to. Or, alternatively, when not to use podcasts as an elementary teacher! This is for the National Science Digital Library’s Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears webzine.
Any suggestions are appreciated, thank you!
I am a science education and communications consultant -- view my website for my full range of services.
I am a physicist, writer, podcaster, and educator in Boulder, CO. On this blog I get to wax on about science stuff I think is cool (like weird science, or stuff we think is true but isn't), K-16 science education, hands-on science activities, teaching pedagogy, and how to communicate science. Geek on. 8-)
) posts articles and discussions on clicker use. Very nicely done.
. Definitely a worthwhile read!
’)
