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.
Journals and agencies that report popularized science (E.g. The Economist) are abuzz with a recent paper in Physics Review Letters 106, 018301 by a Nordic group of researchers successfully modeling the fundamental chemical properties (electronegativity) of lead and lead dioxide in lead acid batteries due to the relativistic mass correction of lead electrons. This is relevant for introductory physics teachers because the common, everyday life applications cited for relativity are the Global Positioning System (car navigation and cell phones) and possibly the mass of electrons striking the phosphor in a Cathode Ray Tube. The PRL paper Relativity and the Lead-Acid Battery by Ahuja, Blomqvist, Larsson, Pyykkš, and Zaleski-Ejgierd has been reported by a number of print and online journals, including PRL Focus <focus.aps.org/story/v27/st2#author>, the Economist <www.economist.com/node/17899724> and Physics News <www.physnews.com/physics-news/cluster126201795/>. Relativistic electronic effects seem to explain many chemical and optical properties of dense metals and may prompt new insights into heavy metal chemistry and battery design.
A number of teachers on the Modeling-L listserv <lists.asu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=MODELING> are experimenting with technology for reducing lecture in their classrooms by video podcasting (vodcasting) <vodcasting.ning.com/>. Some call this approach the Reverse or Flipped Classroom – these teachers are doing homework together with students during scheduled class time and providing online lecture and example problems for student homework. Frank Noschese provides a link to a news item concerning a group of South Dakota Advanced Placement physics teachers vodcasting a year of their class lectures <bit.ly/APvodcasting>.
Paul Bianchi describes using a smart pen to record problem solving examples stroke by stroke with an audio overlay and having students watch these from a school web server. He then spends valuable class time on experiments and lab work, group problem solving and whiteboard discussion. Paul made a demo video that the smart pen manufacturer <livescribe.com> shares at <tinyurl.com/EchoSmartPen>.
Frank Noschese teaches physics at John Jay High School in Cross
River, NY. Paul Bianchi teaches
physics at Horace Greeley High School in Chappaqua, NY
TheyÕre here: you can now buy 10mW blue laser pointers for under $15 on <amazon.com>. IÕm still getting over my inexpensive yet fantastically bright green laser pointer, which is much brighter to the human eye. Ah well, I can still blow $150 on one of those cool new Echo smart pens.