ISPP REMINDER
April 2011
OUR NEXT MEETING . . .
. . . is at Lake Forest College
Tuesday
April 12, 2011
6:30 - 9:00 p.m.
A map and directions are enclosed.
THE FREE GIVEAWAY . . .
. . . something you should find useful to excite student interest in physics - and who knows? - maybe even your own!
FUTURE MEETINGS. . .
April 12 (Tuesday) Lake Forest College – Bailey Donnally, Mike Kash, Scott Schappe
May 9 (Monday) Niles West High School – Martha Lietz
June 7 (Tuesday) Museum of Science and Industry- Ruth Goehmann
AT OUR LAST MEETING . . .
Mel Sabella (Chicago State University) greeted
us in the sunroom in their new library building. He called our attention to the
13th Annual Chicago Symposium Series on Excellence in Teaching
Mathematics and Science that will be held May 6, 2011 from 10:30 am to 5:30 pm.
Mel also pointed out Summer Workshop for High School Teachers over ten days
June 27 – 29, July 6 – 8 and July 11 – 14. There is a stipend. Mel Showed us a
PhysTEC recruitment video for physics teachers which you can access on-line at http://www.phystec.org/video/video-teachphysics.php.
Debbie Lojkutz (Joliet West High School) gave out new teacher bags to Patrick Strybel,
Angela Moore, Laura Merlo and Virginia who did not give her last name.
Angela Moore and Jennie Passchl (Chicago State University) are
working with Mel to develop lesson plans for high school teachers. Angela
explained that she thought a good way of introducing students to electricity
and circuits would be to have them examine a simple flashlight. She passed out
flashlights they obtained from the Oriental Trading Post for us to look at.
These flashlights were made of transparent plastic so one could see the inner
workings and they could be taken apart. According to the lesson plan, they
first give out a pretest to see at what level of understanding the students are
coming in. They then proceed with an activity working with the flashlight to
examine its operation. They will also assemble a circuit from a diagram. The
exercise concludes with a post-exam testing how much they have learned.
Thanks.
Art Schmidt (Northwestern University) showed us a baseball with a timer and asked us what one might do with it. Art explained that the Speedball allows one to measure the speed of a pitched baseball. He related how early baseball timers would sart a timer when a button just beneath the leather hide of the ball was released. The time would be stopped by the impact of the ball in a catcher’s glove. One could look up the speed on a table provided with the ball. Art didn’t want to know the speed but instead would use the clock to time the drop of the ball. Eventually the battery wore out in his ball and he needed to replace it. Much to his dismay the newly designed ball calculates the speed instantly without ever giving the time. So he now uses the table to convert from speed back to time. Also, instead of a button to be released, the ball senses the change of dielectric of a capacitor inside the ball due to the pitcher’s hand touching it. He dropped the ball through several distances and obtained times which he arranged in a table. When the distance of fall was doubled from 1 meter to 2 meters the time of drop did not double. Art squared the times to show that the distance was proportional to the square of the time of drop as predicted by equations of uniform acceleration. The ‘Laser Ball’ is also called a ‘Speed-Sensing Ball’ made by Ron Link. He found it in an Arbor Scientific catalogue. They no longer stock them but you can find them on the internet at http://www.laserballs.com/tronlinksales.htm for $15.
John Milton (DePaul University retired) in
retirement is helping out the physics teacher at St. Martin De Porres High
School in Waukegan trying to find equipment for the lab on a stringent budget.
He is also helping out the local Junior High Science teacher with a similar
effort. He showed us a puzzle he gave the Jr Hi teacher. He tied two resistors
together in parallel. One was covered to hide the value of the resistor. The
challenge is to find the value of the unknown resistor. We thought about it.
How would you do it? American Science and Surplus is selling a fluffy material
for 25 cents a foot that works well as charging ‘fur’. John made an
electroscope with a piece of aluminum foil folded over a toothpick. He charged
the plastic body of a BIC pen and held it near his electroscope. The aluminum
leaves spread indicating the presence of charge.
John talked about using Scotch magic tape or vinyl electrical tape to show electrostatic discharge when the tape is applied to a surface and then ripped off briskly. He found that transparent tape from Walgreens works. John found that cellophane tape seems to be getting hard to find. He reminded us of another use of cellophane tape. Viewing it through crossed Polaroids (from American Science and Surplus) produces interesting colored patterns owing to the optically active property of the tape to rotate the plane of polarized light as it passes through the tape. John found Scotch tape at 5 cents a roll at American Science and Surplus and brought some to give away at the meeting. Thanks, John.
John cited the February 18 issue of Science which featured the 2010 winners of the Visual Challenge cosponsored by NSF. One of the video’s featured explains how GPS technology makes use of relativity. The URL is: http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/perimeterinspirations/gps/player.php?format=q John suggested we visit the American Science and Surplus Web site for good deals on tools. He found a $16 five-piece electric test kit that included a multimeter. Harbor freight is also a good source. Finally he mentioned that Bulletin of Atomic Scientist is publishing daily updates from the Japanese reactor incident on their web site.http://www.thebulletin.org/.
John reminded us that the Harald Jenson award would be made at Lake Forest and that the John Rush award needed to be decided for the meeting at The Museum of Science and Industry in June.
Martha Lietz (Niles West High School) showed her favorite PhET applets from their web site http://phet.colorado.edu/. My Solar System was one. Circuit Construction Kit is another. Martha introduced Curtis Hieggelke author of nTipers (ISBN 13-978.0-321-75375-5) a book of Newtonian Tasks Inspired by Physics Education Research (Addison-Wesley Series in Educational Innovation) by C J Hieggelke, D P Maloney, and Steve Kanim Martha showed us some of her favorite problems involving friction and ‘working backward’ problems from the book. Curt says that another book is in the future.
Anne Brandon (Joliet West High School retired) reminded us of the AAPT student photo contest. The deadline is May 15.See the web site at http://www.aapt.org/programs/contests/photocontest.cfm. She also called for volunteers to help on Physics Day at Great America on May 17.
Mel Sabella (Chicago State University) passed out meter sticks, a dowel, a wad of clay and several machine nuts. He also distributed an exercise sheet. We balanced the meter stick on the dowel which we stuck onto the clay to keep tit from moving under the meter stick. Then Mel asked if we could design an experiment to weigh the meter stick in units of nuts. How would you do it?
Mel invited us to the Physics Department in the science building to pick out equipment from a pile of stuff they were getting rid of. Thanks Mel. There were some neat treasures to take home.
Submitted by Arthur Schmidt
For any information regarding ISPP see the home page <http://www.ispp.info/>
BRING FRIENDS BRING IDEAS! ! SEE YOU THERE! ! !
Mike Kash Art Schmidt Ann Brandon
Kevin McCarron Pete Insley Paul Dolan/Joe Hemanek
John Milton Ruth Goehmann Debby Lojkutz/Eric Jergens
Tom Senior Earl Swallow Van Bistrow/ Dennis Gordon
Gordon Ramsey Roy Coleman Earl Zwicker
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Directions to Lake Forest College
