WebSights features announcements and reviews of select sites of interest to physics teachers. 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.
The Engineer Guy <http://www.engineerguy.com/> by Bill Hammock of University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign
This site claims to host ÒThe most
irreverent & playful engineering videos ever madeÓ and one video in
particular <http://www.engineerguy.com/videos/video-pop-can.htm> analyzes
the leverages used lifting the non-removable Aluminum pop-can tab (the trick is
not to fight the pressure in the can, but try to use it to assist in first
venting the can with a second class lever lifting the rivet, then changing to a
first class lever after venting and depressing the punch out). Over a dozen other short (mostly about
three minute) videos discuss engineering and design underlying coffee
percolator bubble pumps, whiffletrees, Geiger counters, matches, light bulbs,
chairs, cell phones and concrete.
A nice compendium of engineering and physics concepts cleverly used in
everyday technology, humorously presented.
Brought
to my attention by Kevin OÕDonnell, Nuclear Medicine Engineering group, Toshiba
Corporation.
Mathematical Doodling and mathematical food cutting, balloon
twisting, paper musical instruments, music organs etc <http://vihart.com/doodling/>
by Vi Hart
An inveterate doodler recently emailed me a link to a set of mathematical doodling games she has been trying called Doodling in Math Class: Snakes and Graphs described in a fascinating and entertaining video at <http://vihart.com/doodling/>. The author, Vi Hart describes herself as a Òrecreational mathemusicianÓ and her doodling videos combine doodling, mathematics, graph theory, knot theory, topology, high speed banter and deadpan puns. Hart also presents doodling videos on infinite series, number theory, prime numbers, SierpinskiÕs triangle, PascalÕs triangle, fractals and binary trees. HartÕs dadÕs math sculpture pages discussing slicing bagels into interlocked mobius strips <http://www.georgehart.com/bagel/bagel.html> were earlier published in this column. Teachers should be warned that her banter does at times disparage standard classroom direct instruction, and that a google search on doodling and concentration might encourage you and your students in off-task doodling anywhere.
Brought to my
attention by Andromeda MacIsaac, Civil Engineering student at Dalhousie
University.
PBS Circus Physics <http://www.pbs.org/opb/circus/classroom/circus-physics/>
This physics centric site is part of a much larger site devoted to the PBS series Circus, but is well done and engaging. Numeric and video analysis activities and classroom guides are available addressing juggling and projectile motion, dog acts and NewtonÕs Laws, trapeze artists and conservation of linear momentum and the pendulum, acrobats and angular momentum and center of mass and tricks involving centripetal motion and the conservation of energy. The site includes online activities, downloadable quicktime videos, and teacher activity guides, mainly pitched to a conceptual / algebra physics audience.
Brought to my
attention on PHYS-L by Dwight Souder, Crestview HS Physics, Ashland, OH.
Trolling the physics teaching blogs:
Frank Noschese prepared a series of compelling videos of cart collision demonstrations at <http://fnoschese.posterous.com/colliding-carts>, where the carts have different masses and speeds. Compellingly, the carts have large hoops on them that flex during the collisions and one can readily and convincingly see that the hoop distortions are equal by watching carefully or stepping through the videos frame by frame. Nochese used this activity to introduce NewtonÕs Third law. The hoops are widely available from a variety of sources, including Vernier Scientific, the Science Source and Carolina Scientific, and these videos show why.
Also, NoscheseÕs Action-Reaction blog post on the $2 Interactive Whiteboard at <http://fnoschese.wordpress.com/> recently received an Edublog award. Congrats to Frank.
Dan FullertonÕs Physics in Flux: Rethinking High School Physics weblog at <http://aplusphysics.com/flux/> was also cited in the professional lists recently, particularly a post from one of his past HS students – The Five Most Helpful Things To Remember From High School Physics, available at <http://tinyurl.com/5physthings>. Like NoscheseÕs blog, FullertonÕs blog also has a sidebar collecting over a dozen physics teaching and closely related blogs.
Frank Noschese
teaches physics at John Jay HS, and Dan Fullerton teaches physics at
Irondequoit HS in NY.