Geeky treats #2: Chemical Cake

December 7, 2010

Don Rathjen also has a wonderful activity called Chemical Cake.  This is a great activity for this time of year since the recipe makes a spice cake (why a spice cake?  You’ll find out….).  He makes the following substitutions in a standard cake recipe: Egg (emulsifier)   –>  soap margarine (lubricant)   –>  vaseline water [...]

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Geeky treats #1: Electrical Cake (Just like Ohm-made)

December 6, 2010

There’s nothing cooler than something geeky that’s also yummy in your tummy.  So, this post is the first in a series about some cool science that that we can eat. There’s more than one way to bake a cake.  For one, why bother to let the convection of heat in your oven bake your cake [...]

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US Postal Charges Drive Global Warming

December 2, 2010

We knew that the rise in postal charges was horrible and inhumane, but now we can see that it’s also killing the planet!  A wonderfully funny blog post accompanies this over at JoNova. Similarly, global warming has apparently been causing the population of pirates to decrease: So, this means… the US postal service is killing [...]

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We’re on our 500th post! Come over and say hello.

November 30, 2010

Welcome to the 500th post of sciencegeekgirl!  To celebrate, I’m going to resurrect a meme from Not Exactly Rocket Science (via Cocktail Party Physics) and ask readers to introduce themselves in the comments.  Lurkers and one-time visitors and vocal frequent visitors — you know which one you are.  Say a quick hello and tell us [...]

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Geeky gifts

November 26, 2010

It’s black Friday!  Stay away from the mall and do some geek shopping.   Here are a few ideas: Giant Microbes are always a hit. Many years ago, my housemate gave me the common cold. I eventually gave it to my boyfriend (now my ex). No word yet on whether he’s recovered. At least I didn’t [...]

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Classroom activities on the atmosphere

November 23, 2010

Teaching about the atmosphere?  Here are a few ideas for the classroom. Activities about the atmosphere are particularly well suited for talking about air pressure, since air pressure is essentially the weight of the atmosphere pushing down on us.  At the Exploratorium we had a couple of really great activities to get at this idea. [...]

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How One Science Professor Made an Impact

November 22, 2010

I’m trying something different with today’s post:  A meta-commentary on one student’s memories of a favorite teacher.  Jillian Gile wanted to share her experiences with an inspiring teacher.  I saw many important messages in her story about what makes effective education, from a research standpoint.  So, here is Jillian’s story, with my meta-commentary appended.  Enjoy! [...]

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Friction is your friend…. A climber rests easy in her knowledge of physics

November 11, 2010

I was recently offered the chance to do a guest post for Expand Outdoors (a local blogger’s site about how the outdoors can be a powerful force for life transformation).  So, what would I write it on?  The physics of climbing, of course. Here is an excerpt of what I wrote for her site.  Or, [...]

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Hands-on activities for string theory and dark matter

November 8, 2010

There is a dreadful lack of good material for high school physics courses on modern physics — you know, the stuff after Newton?  String theory and dark matter and particle physics?  Yet, this is the stuff that inspires people to go into science — the unsolved mysteries, the new applications of old theories, or even [...]

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Trophy Wives Don’t Need Advanced Physics: Dubious Words of Wisdom from Physics Students

November 4, 2010

When I saw this book title, I knew I had to get a copy (and the kind folks at Pi Press were more than happy to oblige me with a review copy).  Trophy Wives Don’t Need Advanced Physics is clearly a labor of love from Mr. Korsunsky, who clearly spent many years jotting down the [...]

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Webinar: Writing great (science) clicker questions

November 1, 2010

The kind folks at i>clicker have invited me back to give another webinar on effective use of personal response systems.  This one’s called Writing Great Clicker Questions and will be focused on techniques and tips in writing questions that get students discussing and debating — questions that help students learn, rather than just assessing what [...]

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List of helpful educational links

November 1, 2010

This was popular next time so I thought I’d do it again!  Here is a list of helpful educational links that I’ve come across in the last few weeks.  Many are from the NSTA Freebies page. Paul Hewitt’s Next Time Questions (with solutions).  Freely downloadable from Arbor Scientific, this cartoon series is intended to keep [...]

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Physics and science posters

October 28, 2010

If you need physics posters for your classroom, Zazzle is one place you might look.  Anyone can upload a poster (so if you need to make one, and just want someone to ship you a nice laminated copy, you can do that here). Here’s what a search for Periodic Table (restricted to Posters only) gave [...]

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Grants and Cheap Materials for Teachers

October 25, 2010

I’ve been compiling this list for a little while.  Please feel free to add to it. First, you can always make stuff with string and duct tape, using sites like the Exploratorium Science Snacks. But, if you need money: Grants Donors Choose. This program connects potential donors to classrooms.  As a teacher, you indicate your [...]

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This is a news website article about a scientific paper

October 22, 2010

Want to get meta?  In the spirit of Moser’s This is the Title of This Story, Which is Found Several Times In the Story Itself (if you don’t know that one, go read it NOW) — Martin Robbins (The Guardian) has truly outdone himself by poking fun at what passes for science news reporting on [...]

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American Radio Works — Great radio pieces about education

October 20, 2010

I’m an avid podcast listener — this is how I get my information about the world, listening to wonderfully produced audio pieces while I drive around doing errands.  I recently discovered American Radio Works – a set of documentarians from American Public Media.  They do TV documentaries, but also these wonderful, well-researched and well-produced radio [...]

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Some great stuff from the blogosphere this month

October 20, 2010

As usual, I’m not the only one with witty, elegant prose.  So, a shout-out to some of the great stuff that has been posted out there.  Isn’t the internet nifty? Project Stratosphere. This is a sort of educational citizen-science project.  They’ll   launch a series of small balloons into the high atmosphere to gather data, [...]

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Science activities for Halloween! (Repost)

October 18, 2010

This is a repost from October 2009. Enjoy! With halloween fast approaching, it’s time to take advantage of a frivolous holiday to do some fun science stuff. No post about Halloween would be complete without a reference to the Grossology site. Scroll down for “lab activities”: This gets high marks from one teacher who says, [...]

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What we’re NOT doing to train future physics teachers

October 14, 2010

Yesterday, we had a fascinating, but sobering, presentation from a group of physics educators charged with giving the nation a snapshot of how well we’re doing in training the next generation of physics educators.  It’s a pretty grim picture.  “Students who are becoming physics teachers are doing it on their own,” said David Meltzer, “and [...]

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The disappearance of the final exam

October 13, 2010

Today we have a guest post from Olivia Coleman (who contributes to another blog).  Her post on the decline of the final exam follows on the heels of an interesting article in the Boston Globe — “The Test Has Been Canceled” — which generated quite a bit of buzz on the PHYSLRNR listserv, where geeks [...]

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