Today in Physics 201 the 8:00am section finished up the TST activities and then did some nTIPERs related to the 1-D motion.
In the 10:00am section we looked at python for the first time. I stole material from Rhett Allain's introduction to coding - starting with the class looking at constant velocity and constant acceleration motion. We used trinket.io, which I think I'm going to stick with as long as possible. Here's the code we started with:
One note - there was a bit of trouble running the code on the classroom laptops. I'm not sure if it is becuase we use Internet Explorer or because I chose to use GlowScript instead of straight python. I'll need to look at this more.
Today in Physics 201 we continued with the TST activities from yesterday. The 8:00am section started them, and the 10:00am section finished them. In the 10:00am section we did a few more TIPERs after completing the lab activity.
In Physics 110 we looked at the data from the PhET simulation. Students were shown how to plot force vs. stretch distance. The goal I was heading for was developing the idea of a spring constant and Hooke's Law I wanted to try to make the analysis more real to try to illustrate what we are trying to measure. So I had this set up (thanks to our awesome lab prep staff!) in the lab:
Springs with identical hanging masses.
The springs all had the same masses hanging from them, thus the same force. Students easily understood that the spring with the least amount of stretch was the hardest (in terms from the PhET simulation) and the spring with the largest stretch was the softest spring. We will follow up on Thursday to see how the understanding is progressing.
Today in Physics 201 we got the 8:00 am section caught up with the calculus-based derivations of the kinematic equations. The 10:00 am section asked some questions from the homework which led right into the "Tools for Scientific Thinking" activities which involve students walking in front of the motion detectors. We only do the first 3 of these activities. With some encouragement and bit of pushing, most of the groups got through the first two activities in a little over an hour.
Students working on the "Tools for Scientific Thinking" activities.
Is it better to do traditional physics problems...or would there be value in structuring problems so that the answer is stated in the problem?
For example, when I think of a "traditional" physics problem, I think of something that looks like this:
If air resistance is negligible, determine the maximum height (above its release point) of a ball that is thrown straight upward which is in the air for a total of 3.0 seconds.
But, what if the problem were stated more like this:
Show that when air resistance is negligible, a ball thrown straight up that is in the air for 3.0 seconds reaches a maximum height of 11 meters above its release point.
In my mind, the second version explicitly puts emphasis on the process and the reasoning behind the process, whereas the traditional problem naturally emphasizes the answer to the question. I can see this way being done in the classroom setting, for homework practice as well as assessment purposes.
What am I missing here? Why isn't this done for intro physics classes?
Have you ever wanted to embed a PDF inside a larger LaTeX document? For my "Book of Infinite Learning" I wanted to embed a copy of two different journal articles. I didn't want to just grab the text and redo the layout of the articles.
Fortunately, there is a LaTeX way to do this. Here are the commands I used:
The heavy lifting is done by the \includepdf command from the pdfpages package. Read up on the options for that command if you don't want to use all the pages in the file.
What really made my day was the ability to change the margins for my LaTeX document for just the PDFs I wanted to embed. Using \newgeometry I can specify smaller margins for these pages, since the PDF already has plenty of margin spacing. Then \restoregeometry reverts back to the document margins.
I need to make a confession. I may have a problem.
I'm addicted to booklet printing.
Last Spring at the start of the term I was fretting about whether to give paper copies of my syllabus or stick only with the online version.
I may be kidding myself, but I am trying to use a well-formatted layout for the syllabus so that it is easy and welcoming to read. I know not all students will read it, but I want to remove as many barriers as possible.
The real issue was the page count. I had 80 students and an 8-page syllabus to hand out. Even double-sided, that's a lot.
Enter booklet printing.
It's an option on Adobe Acrobat to print foldable booklets. That puts four pages on a single sheet of paper. What's that? You don't want to hand out super small booklets made on standard sheets of paper? Print on legal paper - then each page is 8.5" by 7".
I do TIPER packets this way and other random handouts that I create for my classes. Now practically everything is booklet printed. We save paper and the multiple sheets are easier to keep together.
(This was supposed to be published yesterday, but I wrote it on the plane home and the on-board wifi wouldn't let me publish it, so it was shoved into a drafts folder.)
We did not have class today because I was at the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House. Technically, the meeting was at the Eisenhower building - which is where the majority of the President's staff work every day.
Today in PHYS 201 we connected the motion diagrams to graphs and introduced concepts: position, displacement, average velocity and average acceleration. We also discussed the connection of the slope of a graph and that taking a limit as the time interval becomes small leads to an instantaneous velocity or acceleration. The 10:00 section was able to use calculus to go from a constant acceleration back to an expression for position as a function of time. That section also got the first packet of nTIPERS.
The PHYS 110 class started by looking at the class data from the previous mini-lab. It was not as clean as I'd hoped, but we talked a bit about variance and uncertainty in data and how to improve that.
Then we followed that discussion up with one of my favorite demos - taking a set of 5 balls of various sizes and masses and challenging the groups to order them by weight. The key to this demo is that there should be a small steel ball which weighs LESS than a larger foam ball. Most groups will say the metal ball is the heaviest. Today there were two groups that said the foam ball was not the lightest, but the other four groups said it was. Students are amazed to learn the foam ball is the heaviest and the steel ball is less massive than two of the balls (at least) in the set. It is a dramatic illustration of the body's sensitivity to pressure.
After finishing up the intro to basic physics, we started on Simple Harmonic Motion and got through part of the PHeT demo on Masses and Springs as a mini-lab
The part of the article that caught my eye the most was this:
Increasing the object's moment of inertia makes it harder to shake the camera unintentionally. One way to increase the moment of inertia would be to add more weight to the camera system, but this would make things harder for the cameraman. Instead, Garrett Brown decided to take the existing components of the camera and spread them out. This increases the distance between the axis of rotation and the mass of the total camera assembly, making the camera more resistant to rotation.
I wonder if it would be possible to develop a physics demonstration, or better, a lab based on the physics of the steadicam. I know there are some consumer-grade steadicam mounts, but I'm not sure if those would be useful for a physics lab.
I'm just brainstorming here, but what if there was a lab where students had a goal of developing a steadicam mount for either their phone or a camera that we have in the lab. There might be constraints on the construction or mass of the mount and/or some sort of guidelines on the assessment of the effectiveness of the mount. Or maybe what would be even better is if students developed their own methods of assessing the effectiveness of the mount.
I'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas related to steadicam physics.
Then I challenged the class to make their own motion diagrams using a blinking LED on an arduino captured with a long exposure photo. My idea was to use the exercise as way to have a goal, try something out, analyze the results and iterate until reaching the desired outcome. I think it worked all right, but I wish we had more time.
In Physics 110 we introduced ourselves to each other and then started getting into the basic physics material. I passed out the syllabus and went through that.
We got all the way through the first "mini-lab" I had set up, which was finding the acceleration of the IOLab carts going down a small ramp. I realized as the class was doing the lab that I have no idea how to save the data. Oops. Going to need to figure that out!
Today in PHYS 201 we did this excellent activity which was linked to on twitter. I'm glad I saw it and tried it out with the classes, because I had run out of time after having the class do the FCI and handing out the syllabus. Having only 90 minutes each day is going to make each day seem tighter, but I think overall it will be better.
I only recently discovered that the American Museum of Natural History has a few videos on acoustics. These videos are short and pretty good. They all have native captions in the videos, which is a great feature.
The above video shows off quite a few historical scientific devices for studying acoustics, but other than mentioning a wave machine, does not really discuss much about the specific devices. My question: how many examples of the devices shown are still being used in labs and classrooms around the world?
The second video in the series is about the concept of waves and the propagation of sound as a wave. Again, the video is short, but the science is solid.
The third video is all about tuning forks. I think the science here is a little less well done, although it is passable for introductory level acoustics. That said, there's not a whole lot of interesting or relevant science being conveyed in this video. Some interesting history, but that's about it.
The fourth video is about Chladni's demonstration of mode shapes of vibrating plates. This video is really short.
The last video in the series is an introduction to the idea of resonance. Here, I think the science is not great. It's not exactly wrong, but there is no solid explanation or definition of resonance given which gives the impression that the examples cited are two distinct types of resonance. I think I would show this video to my class after our resonance discussion and ask them what they like and don't like about the video.
There are more videos, but they are all demonstrations of the artifacts shown in the above videos. See the playlist here:
There was a bit of overlap between this list and a series of articles, infographics and other material that I have compiled into a booklet I am affectionately calling the “Book of Infinite Learning”. The learning is what is infinite; the book is not.
I compiled all the articles together and printed them in booklet form. Of course, I have no rights to these articles, so I can't share the books beyond my classroom, but I can share the links to the articles that went into this booklet.
Here’s a partial list of all the articles I’m giving my classes this Fall:
How Does the Brain Learn Best? Smart Studying Strategies - http://bit.ly/brain-learn-best This article is from the Mindshift blog on KQED’s website.
Bigger Gains for Students Who Don’t Get Help Solving Problems - http://bit.ly/bigger-gains Another article from the Mindshift blog.
What It Feels Like to Be Bad at Math - http://bit.ly/bad-at-math This article is from the incredibly brilliant Math with Bad Drawings blog. Check it out!
Failures, Mistakes and Other Learning Tools - http://bit.ly/failures-mistakes This is a post from the Adventures with the Lower Level blog. It really spoke to me when I first read it.
The Key to Science (and Life) Is Being Wrong - http://bit.ly/key-to-science From one of the Scientific American blogs.
Multitasking while studying: Divided attention and technological gadgets impair learning and memory - http://bit.ly/divided-attention An article from Slate.
Confuse Students to Help Them Learn - http://bit.ly/confuse-students This piece is from The Chronicle of Higher Education. It highlights Derek Muller’s physics education research work.
How ‘Deprogramming’ Kids From How to ‘Do School’ Could Improve Learning - http://bit.ly/deprogramming-kids Another piece from the Mindshift blog.
Re-reading is inefficient. Here are 8 tips for studying smarter. - http://bit.ly/studyingsmarter From Vox.com. Out of the 8 tips, there are a couple I don’t fully agree with, but the others are really good. The article as a whole is a great discussion starter.
O Adjunct! My Adjunct! - http://bit.ly/o-adjunct From The New Yorker. Our students need to know about precariat faculty.
As you can see, I have a few favorite sources that I have drawn from over the years - Rhett Allain and the Mindshift blog, especially. All the articles are things that others have shared with me on twitter over the years. I'm always excited to get to share them with students - bring on this new term!
I have two disclaimers about this post. First, this post is coming about four and a half years late. What can I say? I'm not so good at the internet hot take thing. The second disclaimer is that I wrote these notes up quickly today while dealing with a teething and sick baby. These are my quickly-jotted notes.
Alright, so here's the deal - in late summer 2011, Vi Hart posted the following video about the mathematics and physics of sound:
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I like Vi Hart's videos. She has great enthusiasm for math, science and music. Her passion is wonderful. But this video was not great, in my opinion. There are a number of mistakes that she makes and misconceptions that she perpetuates. I think there was a bit of criticism when the video first came out, but it was mostly about how she wrote "vasilar" membrane instead of basilar membrane. She edited the description of the video to say "Accuracy not guaranteed." That doesn't really stop people from watching the video - not that I want to deter people from getting excited about sound and acoustics at all. But it's a bit frustrating when there are so many mistakes in such a popular video.
So, below are my notes on the video. There are parts that I like, and I mention them as well.
1.) 0:02
Talks about air molecules set into motion by the strings and then the wave reaching your ear. But the strings don’t move nearly enough air to make a sound that is audible. The string drives the bridge, which drives the top plate of the instrument. Much of the sound radiation comes from the top plate, but the top plate also drives the air inside the cavity as well as coupling to the back plate.
2.) 0:37
She conflates speed and frequency which is a common misconception. Strictly speaking, not WRONG, but poor phrasing since the speed of the string depends on what point on the string you are looking at as well as the amplitude and the speed is constantly changing. The frequency is not changing (as much). I really don’t like when people use this type of phrasing, since it perpetuates misunderstandings of frequency.
3.) 0:40-50
The initial description of the swing is not bad, but it is not used as completely as it could be, and as we’ll see later, the analogy is stretched beyond what is accurate.
4.) 0:55
Says “That’s amplification.” Well, actually, what was described was resonance, but that was not mentioned.
5.) 1:02
While it is true that driving an oscillator at a frequency above it’s natural frequency will not result in an amplitude as high as if it is drive at the natural frequency (which is what resonance is) you aren’t technically dampening the vibration in that case. That is a nit pick, I guess. However, the visual in the video doesn’t exactly match what is being described, either.
6.) 1:08
"(The string) wants to swing at a certain speed, frequency.” - Again, the conflation of speed and frequency. This bothers me because when you look at the wave speed and the relation between wave speed, frequency, and wavelength it is something different than talking about frequency using the word “speed”.
7.) 1:19
It’s not called a sympathy vibration - it’s called a sympathetic vibration.
8.) 1:22 - 2:26
The description of how the ear works is overall not too bad.
Weirdly, at 1:29 there is a "Fun Fact" in the video which says the number of molecules in a sound wave is larger than the national debt. I can't even unwrap what that is supposed to mean. I get that the sentiment is that there are a large number of air molecules involved in the transport of sound, but - the units are different and how is this "sound wave" defined so that we can count the number of air molecules?
9.) 1:47
“faster frequency” should be “higher frequency” so as not to reinforce the speed = frequency misconception.
10:) 2:38 - 3:07
This whole mess of talking about pushing the swing every other time is just bizarre. The idea that you can drive an oscillator at a lower frequency and then get it to oscillate at it’s natural frequency is inherently non-linear when applied to acoustics-related oscillators. I’m not even really sure what it says about the physics of a pendulum, to be honest. And this is not to say that there is NOT any non-linear effects at play in the ear or with the production of sound, but for what is discussed in the video, the nonlinearities are insignificant.
11.) 3:08 - 3:30
In this section Vi is applying non-linear behavior to the motion of the basilar membrane. She asks: if one frequency goes in, shouldn’t the cochlea respond at places where I’m not actually an expert on the auditory system, but I have never heard about non-linear effects in the cochlea for pure tones at normal sound levels. I’d love to know if I’m wrong about that, but I don’t think I am.
12.) 3:30 - 3:46
Vi asks a really interesting question here. She asks if your ear hears a complex sound at a certain fundamental frequency f, but then a second complex sound at frequency 2f is played, wouldn’t your brain perceive them as the same even if they came from different places? At least, that is what I understood her to be asking. If so, that is a great question!
13.) 3:48 - 5:25
She does a good job of introducing the idea of the overtone series here.
14.) 5:26
"…this is not some magic relationship between mathematical ratios and consonant intervals. It’s that these notes sound good to our ear because our ears hear them together in every vibration that reaches the cochlea."
She is starting to tie the ideas of the overtone series back to her question posed at 3:46. As stated, the above quote is TRUE for the example that she gave (or any overtone series, really). My issue with what is stated is that it makes it sound like ANY vibration that reaches our cochlea has the overtone series embedded in it, which is not true.
15.) 5:34
“Every single note has the major chord secretly contained within it."
This statement is true only if the note is a complex tone containing a harmonic spectrum, which is often the case, but not all instruments will produce such notes.
16.) 5:48
Finishes the explanation of the overtone series.
17.) 5:50
“…because of physics, but I don’t know why…” This is just annoying. Much of the previous explanation contained a lot of physics. There’s no excuse to just say “I don’t understand physics…"
18.) 5:54
“…twice as fast…” Again with the frequency / speed issue.
19.) 6:25
“You don’t notice the higher (harmonics), usually, because the lowest pitch is loudest and subsumes them."
The lowest frequency in a harmonic spectrum is referred to as the fundamental frequency. The fundamental frequency often, but not always, has the highest amplitude in the spectrum. But your ear still associates the PITCH of the sound with the fundamental frequency whether it is loudest or not - or even there at all, as the video points out later. Note that this line also incorrectly uses the term “pitch” to refer to a component of the complex tone. Pitch is a subjective quantity that you associate with the tone as a whole. (So, if we’re counting that is 2 errors here.)
20.) 6:51
“String is pushing around the air…"
Same mistake as made at the start of the video: the string is not pushing a large amount of air. The top plate of the viola is doing the pushing on the air molecules of the sound wave that you hear.
21.) “Basilar membrane is vibrating in sympathy with all these frequencies…"
I’m not sure that it is wrong to say the basilar membrane is vibrating in sympathy with the other parts of the ear and air and instrument, but I’m not sure it’s correct to say it is vibrating in sympathy with the frequencies. Call this a minor nitpick.
22.) 7:14
Description of timbre is brief, but good.
23.) 7:17
Compares the sound a pure tone makes to the vowel sound “ooh” and says it sounds like a flute. Timbre is a subjective quality of sound, but I would disagree that all pure tones sound like oohs or like a flute.
24.) 7:27
There is a comment here about using our mouth to “shape the overtones coming from our vocal cords”. I’ll grant some poetic license to this statement, and it is true that the mouth shape helps determine the vowel sounds. It would have been better to include all parts of the vocal tract.
25.) 7:33 - 7:50
The lowpass filter demo - it’s not exactly clear to me what concept is being demonstrated here.
26.) 7:54 - 9:42
Overall this section is not bad. I will point out that when overtones are played separately and then together you are cuing your ear to listen to the different parts of the tone, and so many people (certainly not everyone, though) will be able to pick out the different parts of the tone after being cued. That does not make the tone any less of a complex tone, but you need to be careful what conclusions you are drawing from this demo. Also, she did not control for amplitude in the overtones starting from about 8:07 and so every combination of tones is clipped, meaning that the sound coming from the speakers actually has MORE harmonic content in it than she intended to demonstrate. This can be seen graphically in the waveform at 9:41.
(I’m going to ignore the overtone fitting the number of bumps comments around 8:45.) Her idea to show the waveforms in actual size is pretty neat, I think.
27.) 9:43
"To make this shape, it pushes forward fast here, then does this wiggly thing, and then another big push forward."
Another reference to “fast” and the rest of the description is not physically or mathematically great here.
28.) 10:20
“Some frequencies get pushed the wrong direction sometimes…” I don’t even know what this means. Frequencies aren’t getting pushed anywhere. This makes no sense to me.
29.) 10:25 - 11:16
The parts about the sound source discrimination are pretty good.
30.) 11:17-11:50
The part about the missing fundamental is good.
31.) 11:52 - end
I think Vi does a great job of reminding us that there is a lot of beauty and wonder in nature that science and mathematics can help us explore. I’m certain that this joy she brings to her videos is what keeps people sharing and watching them.
Ten percent of the grade in his class comes from participation points. Students get points by answering a question when called on, by asking a good question or by responding to a poll. (Duncan uses clickers, devices that allow students to collectively answer multiple-choice questions in class.)
For his experiment, he says he got buy-in from students first, as he wrote:
"I asked them to vote if I should offer one participation point for taking out their cell phone, turning it off and leaving it out on my desk. To my amazement the vote was unanimous. 100% voted yes. So they all took out their phones, put them on the desk, and we had an exceptionally engaged class."
I tend to view my classes a bit like an economist: students will respond to whatever incentives we provide them with. If we provide them with the incentive of easy points, most will choose to take whatever action is necessary to get the easy points.
In the case of Duncan's class, the incentive is a point in exchange for placing a turned-off cellphone on a desk in the front of the room. It's not clear what that one participation point each class contributes to the total of a student's overall grade. It is reasonable to conclude that the one point will not translate into making or breaking any student's grade for the term. The hope is that the commensurate increase in engagement (due to removal of distraction) is an overall larger effect on the students. That is, a more engaged student will gain in the subject knowledge more than just whatever the one participation is worth in the weighted score.
I don't use participation points because I want to incentivize the learning of the content of the course. I don't want students to be counting points through the semester, because if they do that, then they are not focusing on the concepts we spend all of class discussing. I have gotten rid of all points in the classes I teach, opting instead for ratings in a standards-based assessment and reporting approach. It has worked well, and I believe I am helping students be intentional about thinking about the concepts in order to get the grades that they want.
But, I struggle with the students who choose to get their cell phones out and ignore what we are doing in class. I then have to wonder: what if I have the wrong view of incentives? What if Duncan is providing a small and conceptually meaningless incentive in exchange for getting higher conceptual gains? Is that a better approach?
I don't have answers for those questions. I just hope I'm not completely wrong with what I'm already doing.
When I see news stories that talk about sound, sound waves, acoustics, or the physics of music my defenses usually go up as I'm reading through the article. I try to suppress the urge to pick apart every little detail that isn't exactly right, but sometimes I can't help myself.
One trigger for me is the sonification of data - in other words taking a time-varying signal and turning it into an audible sound. There is nothing wrong with using this technique to explore something in nature, but it does not mean that the object is emitting a sound wave, playing a tune, or singing.
I ran across this article last week from Space.com, which starts with the following:
In space, no one can hear you scream — that's because on Earth, sound waves move through the air, and there is no atmosphere in space. In empty space, there is no atmosphere, so the sound waves don't have a material to travel through. It's impossible for humans to hear sounds in the vacuum of space just like it's impossible to surf where there is no water — the waves need something to move through.
But last year, scientists recorded sounds coming from Comet 67P/C-G using the Rosetta Plasma Consortium (RPC) magnetometer instrument.
This instrument measured the sound wave vibrations in the comet's magnetic field, according to a statement from ESA....
When I followed the link to the statement from the European Space Agency, there was no use of the term "sound wave" anywhere in it. I guess the Space.com writer just wanted to spice up the story a little bit. There's nothing inherently wrong with writing a story to be accessible to a wide audience, but it just seems wrong to start an article with the fact that sound can't exist in the vacuum of space, but then in the next paragraph start talking about sound waves from a comet.
If you are a science writer, please remember: sonification of data does not necessarily mean something in nature is producing sound waves.
I'm updating my statement on accommodations for students with disabilities in all my syllabuses this Fall. I would appreciate any feedback or suggestions.
In previous terms I had a very standard, boilerplate statement:
Students with documented disabilities should notify the instructor directly about necessary accommodations. The office of Student Accommodations and Resources (StAR) located in J-2025 provides assistance in verifying needs for accommodations and developing accommodation plans.
But, I want to try to make clear that I believe in fair accommodation for all students. So I'm updating this statement to say:
All students, regardless of physical or mental disability status, deserve an equal opportunity for success in all courses. As your instructor, I am deeply committed to encouraging your success and determined to make any possible accommodation necessary.
Students with documented disabilities should first notify me directly about necessary accommodations as early in the semester as possible. The office of Student Accommodations and Resources (StAR) located in J-2025 provides assistance in verifying needs for accommodations and developing accommodation plans.
Too often I have heard colleagues talk about what conditions students will face in future classes, transfer colleges, grad school or the work environment. I'm not interested in weeding out students who can't conform to arbitrary rules for completion of assessments and/or assignments. I am concerned with seeing that all students can meet their full potential and finding reasonable ways to remove unnecessary barriers to their success.
About a month ago I mentioned on twitter that I assign all my astronomy students to do an astro-journal. This has been a long running assignment since right after I started teaching astronomy over ten years ago. I wanted something that would help students see that they can go from not really understanding much about the science of astronomy to becoming comfortable with the vocabulary and concepts related to the study of the cosmos. Additionally, I wanted students to be able to understand and predict how moon phases work as well as seeing that the study of space is something that is often in the news. (Why space is popular in the press is an interesting conversation to have with a class. I love when a student raises this question.)
One part of the astro-journal that I have retired from using is the "Adopt a space mission" assignment. I used to have students choose (or have assigned to them) an active space mission (unmanned) that they "adopt" and follow throughout the semester. I think it was often a valuable addition to the journal, but when we only meet twice a week, it becomes difficult to squeeze in class discussions about the space missions.
Here is the description that I have been giving my students for how to construct their astro-journal.
"By far the single most significant part of your grade will be made up by the score that you get on the astro-journal. The reason that this assignment is so heavily weighted is that I believe that it has the largest impact on your learning of the topics we are covering in astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, and space science.
You need to establish a notebook or binder that is separate from the notebook that you use to take notes in class or while you are studying at home. You should start your astro-journal immediately.
Periodically your journal will be checked for progress. You will need to bring your journal to class in order for it to be checked. Each of the check-ins will count as a part of the evaluation of the journal.
Your astro-journal will consist of two main parts and an optional third part. One part is a recording of your observations of the Moon. We will cover how to make these observations in class. The other main part of the journal is a record of your reading on current events in astronomy and space news. You need to find and read news stories from reputable sources, then summarize these news stories in your own words and write a brief reflection on what the news stories are covering. The optional part of the astro-journal is a section on ANYTHING else that you see in your daily life that relates to astronomy.
A rubric is posted to the course website that explains how it is graded. Please let me know if you have any questions about the grading of the astro-journal."
Here is the last rubric that I used for the astro-journal project before I switched over to using a standards-based assessment and reporting (SBAR) method of assessment. Really, the SBAR approach used the rubric as a starting place, just the point values were discarded. (Sorry if the formatting is weird here.)
This rubric is inserted into your journal. You have visited the professor's office to show this.
0-1 points
Journal check 1
Professor checks journal in his office during weeks 3 & 4
0-2 points
Journal check 2
Professor checks journal in his office during weeks 6 & 7
0-2 point
Moon Observations
Accuracy
Phase drawn incorrectly; direction missing or wrong; time of observation missing or wrong; altitude missing or wrong; unphysical observation recorded & many indications of faked observations.
0-5 points
Moon phases generally drawn correctly. Occasional incorrect recording of direction, altitude, time. Horizon missing or unclear. Some indications of false (faked) observations.
6-18 points
Moon phase consistently drawn correctly. Accurate observations of direction, time, altitude. Horizon clearly drawn in all entries.
19 points
Completeness
Less than one accurate observation per week on average.
0-3 points
1-3 accurate observations per week on average.
3-18 points
3 or more accurate observations per week on average.
19 points
Neatness
Observations hard to decipher. Phases not drawn clearly. Records not organized in logical manner.
0-3 points
Observations are sometimes inconsistent and/or occasionally difficult to understand.
2-8 points
Observations easy to read and understand. Clear drawings. Logical organization & demonstrates creativity.
9 points
Current Events
Accuracy
Entries include unphysical or scientifically wrong ideas. Entries out of date, with no context provided. Sources not cited or incorrect.
0-5 points
Entries are appropriate and relevant. Sources are listed, but not always cited correctly, completely, and consistently.
5-9 points
Entries are appropriate and relevant. Sources cited correctly, completely and consistently.
10 points
Completeness
Less than one entry per week on average. Most assigned entries & topics missing.
0-5 points
1-2 entries per week on average. Some assigned entries & topics missing.
6-16 points
2-3 entries per week on average. All assigned entries & topics included.
17-19 points
Neatness
Entries nothing more than copies or printouts of articles. No reflection is included. Organization is lacking or nonexistant.
0-4 points
Entries include partial information and partial personal reflection or no personal reflection is included. Organization is consistent and logical.
3-16 points
All entries include your own summary of the article or news item and a personal reflection. Organization is consistent and logical. Presentation of entries demonstrates creativity.
17-19 points
Other
Anything else that you notice or observe that relates to or reminds you of astronomy throughout the semester.
Up to 15 bonus points.
I'm happy to share any of the original resources if you'd like them emailed to you, just let me know.
I was not at the Summer meeting of AAPT which just wrapped up earlier this week. But, I have been following along with the meeting hashtag on twitter (#AAPTSM15) which was a great way to get a sense of what was going on in College Park, without actually being there.
I wanted to do some analysis of the tweeting, so I set up an IFTTT recipe to log all the tweets with the hashtag to a Google spreadsheet. Unfortunately, I didn’t set it up until some people were already flying out for the pre-meeting workshops and related meetings, and apparently my recipe got turned off right about the time the bridge session from AAPT to PERC was starting. So, I don’t have a complete data set, but I have the majority of the tweets.
Here are some numbers:
249 unique accounts tweeted or retweeted with the #AAPTSM15 hashtag. Excluding users who only retweeted something leaves 118 unique accounts, up from 42 a year ago. Not all of them were at the meeting, and some of the retweets may have been from bots, but it’s still a far cry from the winter meeting in New Orleans a few years ago when I think it was just Heather Whitney, Rhett Allain, and myself who were tweeting.
Over 1500 tweets (including 640 retweets) were sent during the meeting. I didn’t follow everyone who was tweeting, so I was grateful that so many were retweeting from their timeline.
What about the most prolific tweeters? Here are the 25 users with the most #AAPTSM15 tweets:
@LCTTA
169
@AAPTHQ
155
@eigenadam
77
@MrLeNadj
55
@TRegPhysics
50
@chrisgoedde
45
@fnoschese
43
@WBrianLane
39
@nquarderer
30
@arundquist
26
@dyanlj
26
@Mr_Martenis
26
@UniverseAndMore
24
@rjallain
22
@kellyoshea
21
@watermanphysics
20
@BlackPhysicists
19
@csealfon
18
@KHSphysics
18
@ainissaramirez
17
@ng_Holmes
17
@bethaapt
16
@fpoodry
15
@SteveMaier_
15
@danny_doucette
14
Once again, the most tweets came from @LCTTA. Nice work, Joe! (Sorry for not linking the usernames to twitter.)
I thought my analysis of the tweets was going to be all about the numbers related to tweet activity. But what is really interesting to me are the themes that emerged (in my opinion) from the attendees who were tweeting.
Ideas which seemed to resonate with attendees, based on my reading of my own timeline included: how do we ensure diversity in the physics classroom, the role of physics education in society in general, how we choose the topics and activities to include in our classes, and how to improve assessment of student learning. Here are some tweets which were some of the most favorited and retweeted of all which illustrate these themes:
Two most of the most retweeted tweets came from Frank Noschese. The first on the social value of learning physics, as raised by Eugenia Etkina:
"What can we do, when we teach physics, to make the world better? (It isn't the motion of objects on inclined planes.)" - @EEtkina#AAPTSM15
So while there was one popular tweet specifically about a neat demonstration, most of the engaging tweets were about big-picture ideas in physics education. This is really neat for me to see, because I have been thinking about many of these issues for a few years, and to be honest, sometimes it feels like no one else is with me. So I hope to have more to say regarding some of the above ideas in the near future.
Finally, the tweets I captured for analysis were only the ones using the meeting hashtag. There was a lot of discussion online between attendees and non-attendees which often did not include the hashtag. My analysis doesn’t capture that dynamic back-and-forth engagement between physics teachers. If you explore the hashtag, starting with the above tweets, you’ll see the discussions which went on, and are still going on.
If you’re not on twitter, there’s no better time than now to check it out. See you at #AAPTWM16 - I’ll be attending as I did this one: on twitter.
I'm not really in the habit of checking up on my "Rate My Professors" (RMP) page, but coincidence led me there on the same day that this post was made by a student in one of my algebra-based physics sections from what I assume is this semester. I suppose that I am a bit heartened that the student was at least thinking about physics on Pi Day.
I want to be very honest - I have two messages for this student: thank you and I apologize.
Thank you for leaving your feedback before the end of the semester. Too often I find the feedback on RMP left in the days or weeks after the course ends. Thank you for voicing your frustration before the end of the semester so that we can work together to make the rest of the semester go better for your entire class.
Although I sincerely want to thank you for leaving this message, I wish that you would have come to me directly with your concerns and complaints. I try to treat all students in my classes as adults and expect that we can interact with each other civilly as adults via direct conversations on the phone, in person or over email. By leaving an anonymous message on RMP, you clearly did not agree. For that, I wish to apologize to you. I apologize that I did not work hard enough to foster a classroom climate where you felt comfortable enough to come to me directly. It is my responsibility to provide a rich learning environment in which you can freely discuss any issues with me. I have either failed to do that, or I have failed to communicate that intent to you. Either way, I intend to increase my efforts to offer avenues for all students to communicate with me.
In your comment you claim that there have been "Literally no lectures or notes in the class." I am not sure if that is hyperbole or not. Each time we begin looking at a new conceptual objective, I have filled the chalkboards with introductions to the objective as well as countless examples of how to do problems related to each objective. I apologize that I was not more clear about the blurring together of lecture with what might typically be called a recitation. At our college, we use a Studio Physics approach to learning physics. Studio Physics means that we are always in the lab (or studio) so we can easily bounce back and forth between lecture, recitation, and laboratory. Our college has a long tradition of using this approach, and I apologize that I was not more clear about that. I will try my best to delineate the shifting between different aspects of the class. I admit I believe it will be difficult for me to do better on this, since I had thought that you all were doing pretty well with shifting from one aspect to another, but I will try to be better.
You state that "Everything is based off the multiple worksheets...which we never go over anyways." I apologize that I have not been more direct with you about how crucial I believe your participation in an active-learning classroom is to your learning. By now, I hope that you have read the article written by Nobel laureate Carl Wieman on the superiority of active-learning over the traditional method of only lecturing to students. There are two quotes that I want to be sure you understand. The first:
"In active learning methods, students are spending a significant fraction of the class time on activities that require them to be actively processing and applying information in a variety of ways, such as answering questions using electronic clickers, completing worksheet exercises, and discussing and solving problems with fellow students."
With the exception of electronic clickers, how does that description compare to our class? The second quote:
"...any college or university that is teaching
its STEM courses by traditional lectures is
providing an inferior education to its students."
Remember that it is not me who is claiming that our method of learning is superior, it is a Nobel laureate who is reviewing the data before him making this claim. I apologize that I have not been more direct in discussing why we do what we do in our class. I hope that I have rectified this situation, but please let me know if there is anything else I can do about it. Additionally, I have made a concerted effort in the two weeks before your feedback was posted to review ALL of the worksheets that we have done in class. Sometimes I ask you to review the worksheets with other students. I try as hard as I can to make sure that all of you understand the correct answers to the worksheets. Sometimes, I don't want to be the one who is giving the explanation for the questions, though. My goal is to get you to a place where you don't need me - you only need the physical laws and correct application of the concepts to reach correct conclusions. I am truly sorry that my desire for you to know and appreciate the wonders of the physical world has not been made more well know to you. I am constantly looking for better ways for me to convey this to you in a way that is not always me just simply telling you. I will continue to try to improve.
Your statement that I use sarcasm in class is true. I am deeply sorry if you interpret my sarcasm to be a personal attack on you. I assure you, it is not. I do not and will not use sarcasm to demean or belittle you as a person. I have been very frustrated this semester that so few of you have done much of the homework. I have wrongly used sarcastic remarks to vent some of this frustration. I had hoped that the sarcasm would work to get you to think differently about how you can use homework to grow your understanding of physics, but I can see that I was wrong. I apologize for that. I failed to give you a more constructive way to ask about homework questions. That, too, was wrong. Here is how I will change that: instead of asking me "Can you show us how to do problem XX from Chapter Y?" you can ask "I was having trouble with problem XX from Chapter Y. The first thing I did was blahblahblah, then after that I wanted to blah, but I got stuck there. Can you help me get unstuck?" This will show me that you have made an honest attempt at the problem and also help me get a window into your way of thinking about the problem.
In summary, thank you again for bringing this to my attention and for doing so before the end of the semester. We have talked in class about everyone's ability to grow and improve. I have apologized for my failures and outlined how I intend to do better to provide a rich learning environment for you. You still have time left in the semester. What will you do to grow and improve your knowledge of physics?
