Energy usage dashboards for teaching physics?

 I just learned about three pretty cool dashboard webpages for showing students energy production / consumption which might be useful for discussing how electrical energy usage is related to climate change. 

The first one covers a large part of the globe: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map

The next two are specific to the United Kingdom: https://renewables-map.robinhawkes.com/#5.97/54.23/-3.617 and https://grid.iamkate.com/

I'd love to know about other options and if anything like the last two exist for North America or the U.S. Let me know if you've seen anything like these that I should be aware of!

Back in the (scientific) python business!

The above five lines of python represent the accomplishment of a (small) summer goal of mine: to have one cohesive python install with all of my favorite python packages for writing code for physics classes and research.

I don't know what happened earlier this year, but I had b0rked up my python install on my school laptop. I have a Macbook Pro, and was running into all sorts of problems: 32 bit vs. 64 bit, which install of python to use and whether or not I could use matplotlib and vpython at the same time.

What I ended up with was two installs of python: one that could use vpython and one that could use matplotlib, but never the two at the same time.

As you can see in the screenshot, I have everything working now with the excellent enthought distribution of python. What I learned today was that ALL  the packages in the vpython dmg file are required to run vpython. I don't remember my original thought process which led me to believe I didn't need the other packages, but I did. Also, I learned today that you can't always (simply) run vpython calls from the python shell, unless you limit the rate of displaying frames by putting rate() inside a loop.  More on that later, maybe.

I know the above packages have significant overlap (scipy extends numpy, pylab has matplotlib, etc.) but I've used each of those in various forms, so I wanted to be able to call any of them without having to THINK about it.  Done.

Okay, so if you made it this far into this post, you deserve a reward. How about 8 tutorials on scientific python programming? My favorites are the SciPy tutorial and the excellent matplotlib tutorial.

Mythbusters need to spin more science

I want to like this segment that the Mythbusters did on the merry-go-round spun by the bullet.  I think it's an interesting question based off of a scene from a movie: Is there enough kinetic energy in a bullet to spin a merry-go-round.

A proper analysis of the question could involve kinetic energy, rotational kinetic energy, torque, angular speed, angular acceleration, angular momentum, friction, air resistance and potentially other factors.

The Mythbusters only vaguely waved their hands at some of these ideas and presented physical parameters in weird units.

The voice over in the above video said "First, the science of spin..." then proceeded to say very little about rotational motion.

Grant talks about how the bullet has to "overcome inertia".  Okay....I mean, we tell physics students that in rotational motion it is the moment of inertia that matters, but I'm willing to let it slide. EXCEPT, he then pulls out a force gauge and measures how much force is needed to just get the merry-go-round to move. But, since we care about the rotation of the merry-go-round, it's the torque that matters.  Plus, what he really is getting at is a measure of the coefficient of static (rotational) friction on the axle.

There were a lot of other problems with the things the Mythbusters said in the segment.  Some of what they said was just using colloquial terms for physical properties which a physicists would not use.  I'm not so terribly upset by those comments.  I'm just bothered by the lack of coherent explanation of the physics of the system.  I came up with a simple analysis of the experiment, using parameters provided in the video and considering just conservation of momentum. I don't claim it to be a full treatment of the question, just more of a back of the envelope type calculation.  (And I don't take friction into account, either.)

I turned my calculation into a pencast:


Analysis of Mythbusters merry-go-round question

You've seen the videos that Vi Hart has been producing featuring what she calls doodle games related to various topics in math, right?  They made the rounds of the science and physics blogs towards the end of last year and beginning of this year.

Here's one of the most popular videos, in case you haven't seen it:



I don't want to sound too critical of what this woman has produced.  In fact, I really like her series of videos. (Plus, she makes homemade musical instruments. How cool is that?)

But, here's what you might not know about Vi Hart: her father is George Hart, a former professor at Stony Brook University, a sculptor, and the first director of the soon-to-open Museum of Mathematics.

What that means to me is that Vi grew up in an environment where curiosity about mathematics was nurtured and developed. It also indicates to me that she has been working for a long time to develop her talents. Those last two points are not criticisms, they are merely observations. 

I do take issue with her underlying commentary on the state of math education (and really, school in general) which is that classes are boring and taught by incompetent teachers, and that students would get more out of class by not paying attention and just playing some doodle games. I'm not even sure I disagree with her (completely) on those points, either. What I disagree with is the notion that anyone learns anything from watching her videos. She talks too fast for most people to be able to maintain comprehension all the way through the video and there are many terms which are unfamiliar to non-mathematicians which fly by as the video is playing.

I wanted to better understand what the doodle games were all about, so the first thing I did was I tried creating some doodles on my own.  (If her only goal in these videos is to get people to try out the doodles, then maybe they are working better than I give her credit for.) I was able to follow the first two doodle games in the above video, but I wasn't able to get the shading right on the third doodle game. More frustrating to me was that I couldn't really understand the importance of the doodles. In the video she mentioned knot theory and weaving but I could never quite catch what it was she was actually saying about all of that.

I went looking for a transcript of the video, but I couldn't find one. So, I sat down at my computer and banged out a transcript myself. I learned a few things by doing that. One, I learned that one of the figures she mentioned in the video is called a Ouroboros. I had no idea what she was talking about when I had watched the video, but by piecing together the transcript I was able to get the correct spelling and look it up online.

After I had the transcript complete, I started looking into all the topics she mentioned in the video. My digging eventually turned into this post at metafilter which was well received by the community over there. In finding the links which went into the post, I was able to dig a little into topics like knot theory and topology which I had previously known next to nothing about. I definitely appreciate that the video brought these ideas to my attention so that I would be inspired to learn more about them.

The thing is, though, it took a lot of my time to read up on those topics. I was constructing the metafilter post for over 2 weeks, working an hour or two every night in my free time. I learned a lot because I put in the effort to do so. I'm willing to bet that Vi Hart has put in thousands of hours of study to cultivate her passion and talent for math. It seems a little disingenuous to me, then, that she puts together videos with the attitude of "classes are boring" and "students don't need to pay attention". For a lot of students, classes are their only chance to engage with topics such as math or science. Most people aren't fortunate enough to have a parent who is a professional scientist or mathematician. It might not appeal to adults who feel they suffered through boring classes in their school years, but how many more kids could she encourage to engage more in their classes if her videos said something like: "Hey, ask your teacher in class about this. If you show interest in it, your teachers will likely respond to that interest!"

But, more importantly, it would be great to remind students that learning takes work. You don't become an expert on graph theory just because you've watched a four minute video on doodles. This is something I know, but I have to constantly remind myself of anyway. If I really wanted to make the third doodle game work, I could do it, but I would have to put in the effort and time to be able to do it. Vi Hart's videos not only miss the opportunity to encourage students to think that way, they might be inadvertently sending students the exact opposite message.

Random links

My browser tabs are over-cluttered with stuff I've been thinking about for awhile.  I need to clear them out so I can focus on other ideas.  Here's what I've been meaning to write about, in no particular order:


Back in October (!) I came across this commentary on the documentary "Waiting for Superman". The meat of the article is in this quote:

Where did you think great teachers come from? That they spring fully formed from the head of Zeus? Just about everybody who’s an accomplished teacher used to be an ineffective teacher, and as the maker of a documentary about first year teachers, I’m totally confused that you don’t seem to understand this. If you want to talk about great teachers, but don’t have anything to say about the conditions under which teachers become great, you are at a different stadium than where the game is happening.
(Hint, by the way: in order to become great, teachers need to make and then learn from their mistakes. What kind of environment fosters making and learning from your mistakes? Fear that you will lose your job over your kids’ test scores? Or maybe transparent, non-defensive collegiality? Okay, good job on that one, now the followup: what kind of education policies are going to create the environment that fosters growth?)

I couldn't agree with that more.  Not because I think I'm a great teacher, but because I think I'm still making and learning from my mistakes. He also linked to another criticism of the film where the main complaint was the confusion on what it means to create an environment where learning happens in a classroom.

Here's a snarky comic strip on what to do to encourage students to read their textbooks. I agree with the premise (that reading the textbook is important) but I'm not sure I completely agree with the message.

Are we teaching students to think like scientists? (Preprint)

Bill Nye talks to Popular Mechanics about teaching evolution in schools, but I was struck by this:

So we want to excite a new generation of kids—every generation—about the passion, beauty and joy—the PB&J—of science.

Passion, beauty and joy are often forgotten in teaching science.  I suppose I'm guilty of it many times, too. Plus, cool acronym!

Here's a guide to what seminar speakers are really saying that was recently posted over at Science. I'm really thrilled that the colloquium speakers we get in our department are usually really good and interesting to listen to.

A well-known astronomy textbook author (and his wife? Not sure.) had a jokey letter to the editor published in the New York Times. Thankfully, it was really brief.

There's an article in last month's American Journal of Physics that explores what was discussed in over 300 conversations students had while doing clicker questions in an intro astronomy class.  I haven't (yet) read that article, but Stephanie Chasteen at The Active Class had a great summary of the article.  Makes me think about what I could be doing better with the clickers.

And the last link for today comes from the president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics who wrote an article with the provocative title: "Endless Algebra - the Deadly Pathway from High School Mathematics to College Mathematics".

End of term clean-up.

Today I'm in my office to clean up and get ready for the summer term course I'll be teaching in July. I've got a stack of papers to go through, clear off my desk and dump in the shred bin. But, I've also got a collection of science news stories which have been cluttering up my browser. In the spirit of clean-up, here's a small link dump:

• PhD student in Canada is studying the psychology of earworms. (What's an earworm?)
• Another Canadian psychologist has examined how Rembrandt draws viewers into his paintings.
• An engineering student in England has adapted a bike to pump water in Guatemala.
• NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter flew over the Phoenix lander and may have imaged the damage to the lander, explaining why it never woke up after the Martian winter. 
• Infrared image of nebula from the WISE telescope looks like a pair of hearts situated next to each other in space.
• Want to go to Neptune and come back in 5 years?  It will only cost you $4 trillion. (More links at bottom of that page.)
• Possibly the most adorably unfortunate misspelling of hadron ever.  Let's hope this kid never loses his interest in science. 
• Something hit Jupiter last year, and amateur astronomers saw it first.
• In May, The Big Picture featured a round-up of really great images of Saturn and its moons.

I think that is all the links I've been saving up. You can always see my shared google reader links, even if you aren't following me.

Back to clearing the desk.

Star Power: the Washington Post interviews Neil Tyson

I got to see Neil Tyson give a talk at the American Association of Physics Teachers Summer meeting in Greensboro last year.  He was really entertaining.  He packed a room with over six hundred seats so there was standing room only and people hanging in the hallway trying to listen. He was really funny, even if some of his joke were unoriginal. (How intelligent is a design that puts a sewage treatment facility next to an entertainment system??  Ha ha...ha........ah.) 

What was great, however, was that his whole talk was about how science educators have a responsibility to reach the public and bring science to them.  I'll never forget when he asked the audience how many of them did not have a TV or how many of them only used their TV to watch DVDs.  Somewhere between 15-20% of the people in the crowd raised a hand, many of them proudly.  Tyson then said "Oh, so those of you that raised your hand have no idea who I am, then!"  The person sitting to my right looked at me and said, "Yeah, I have no idea who this guy is and why AAPT is giving him an award."  I could hear murmuring around me that indicated she was not alone in her opinion.  Tyson pointed that he went on to TV shows like Conan O'brien and The Daily Show not to stroke his ego, but because that's where he can reach the widest audience. He then gave the example of watching the Superbowl, not because he particularly enjoys football, but that he wants to be able to relate to people around him the next day.  His point was that if we, as science educators, want to reach out to the public and have a scientifically literate society, then the scientist should be culturally literate and be aware of what the public is tuned into and turned on by (e.g. Conan and The Daily Show.)  I saw the light bulbs go on all around me as he explained this.

Anyway, I was thinking about this because one of the other stories that Tyson told during that talk he also told to a Washington Post reporter in a really good article.  It's a little long, but well worth the read.  The story Tyson told was about an interaction he had with movie director James Cameron.

Star Power  (Washington Post)