TPT WebSights column draft for September, 2008:

WebSights features announcements and reviews of select sites of interest to physics teachers. All sites are copyright by their authors. This column is available as a web page at <http://PhysicsEd.BuffaloState.Edu/pubs/WebSights/>.

If you have successfully used a physics website that you feel is outstanding and appropriate for WebSights, please email me the URL and describe how you use it to teach or learn physics. <macisadl@buffalostate.edu>.

Getting Connected with other Physics Educators and the Physics Community

Physics educators often struggle to find colleagues to communicate with about teaching physics, and there are many on-line opportunities for professional discourse. Perhaps the greatest resource you can find is your local physics teachers’ alliance – groups of local group of physics teachers who meet roughly monthly to discuss physics teaching hopefully near you. The website at <http://www2.umassd.edu/physics/Alliances/> lists approximately 250 entries for contacts of LPAs in the US, and most are affiliated with The American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) <http://www.aapt.org>. The AAPT state sections typically meet twice per year in your region and are another opportunity to meet with regional colleagues -- see <http://www.aapt.org/Sections/>. The AAPT meets nationally twice per year and the meetings are profound professional development opportunities for physics educators: start planning on attending one at some point in your career.

Joining the AAPT and subscribing to The Physics Teacher together with receiving the AAPT Interactions and the monthly Physics Today newsmagazine are also a way to stay in touch with other physics teachers and the field of physics. One notable resource for new teachers of introductory physics is the Physics Front online community <http://physicsfront.org/> and their collection of materials that are part of the ComPADRE collections of Digital Resources for Physics and Astronomy Education.

For electronic communicators, there are online communities (international and regional listservs) dedicated to physics teaching and physics culture. The largest of these are the more general PHYS-L <http://physicsed.buffalostate.edu/PHYS-L/> and the more high school specific physhare <http://www.geocities.com/physhare/>. Many states and regions (and often AAPT state sections) have regional or state lists dedicated to physics teaching.

Finally, many local college and university physics departments take an interest in physics teacher preparation, professional development, support and outreach. A call to the secretary of the local physics department can help put you in contact with local area physics educators. A coalition of over 100 of physics departments with avowed interests in physics teacher preparation is PTEC <http://www.compadre.org/ptec/>, with a PTEC physics department possibly somewhere near you.

The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics outreach website: <http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/en/Outreach/General/Outreach_Overview/>

Funded by the RIM Corporation (makers of the widely-known BlackBerry handheld device), this research institute located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada has an extensive outreach program which has been described as a Disneyland for physics teachers interested in introducing their students to popular theoretical topics such as cosmology, particle physics, quantum foundations, quantum gravity, quantum information and superstring theory. Recommended highlights include The Mystery of Dark Matter video, a free 28 min classroom video plus a field-tested classroom manual with algebra-based worksheet explorations at <http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/Perimeter_Explorations/General/Perimeter_Explorations/>. This package is the first in a forthcoming series of five such. For enrichment on other exotic physics topics, visit <http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/en/Outreach/Public_Lectures/View_Past_Public_Lectures/> to access four years of streamed video archives from visiting international physics literati presenting monthly public lectures at the Institute.

PI also sponsors free one week summer modern physics workshops for international physics teachers (called EinsteinPlus) and a two week summer camp for international physics students of 16-17 years of age called the International Summer School for Young Physicists (ISSYP) featuring ‘the weird quantum world of atoms and subatomic particles, black holes, warped spacetime, and the expanding universe.’ See the Students and Teacher menus at <http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/en/Outreach/General/Outreach_Overview/>. Start planning now for Summer 2009.

Contributed by Mr. Dave Doucette, Vice President of the Ontario Association of Physics Teachers, a high school physics teacher and a facilitator at PI’s Einsteinplus summer teacher program.

New Texas Instruments site for free online physics activities using TI-nspire: <http://TIPhysics.com>

Texas Instruments provides free curriculum resources and newsletter supporting their new TI-nspire technology (commercially available handhelds and computer software, which are not free). See also <http://ti-nspire.com> and <http://www.education.ti.com>.

From a recent TI press release, contact Marie Hancock, Golin Harris for Texas Instruments mhancock@golinharris.com>.

Understanding Exponential Growth and e: activities and videos

A video on exponential functions and human population growth by Dr. Bartlett on exponentials in two parts is available at <http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2007/12/23/the-most-important-video-youll-ever-see-videos-parts-1-4/> and <http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2007/12/23/the-most-important-video-you%E2%80%99ll-ever-see-videos-parts-5-8/>. A description of low cost activities examples for teaching about exponential growth including rice grains on a chessboard, folding paper and two video examples showing examples of the suddenness of change the rate of change in time at <http://jzimba.blogspot.com/2007/05/understanding-exponential-growth.html>. Finally, an intuitive financial example using compound interest leading to the definition of e as a asymptotic limit (our students often find mathematics more accessible when coached in term of money) can be viewed at: <http://betterexplained.com/articles/an-intuitive-guide-to-exponential-functions-e/>. Understanding exponential change has important social consequences (e.g economic change, resource scarcity, and climate change) as well as our standard physics topics (capacitor charging and discharging, radioactive decay, temperature changes, etc.). The study of natural and social phenomena with the characteristics of slow gradual change over an extended period followed by extreme change in a short interval is a quite important topic to us all.

Submitted by David Rheam, Math Teacher at Pavilion Central HS, NY.