Worth mentioning here is the one about Relative velocity.
http://fnoschese.wordpress.com/2014/09/24/day-16-relative-motion/
He showed students video of ball being thrown with a certain speed and direction from a truck moving with exactly same speed and in exactly opposite direction. If you know vector addition, you can easily guess that this would result in the velocity of the ball equal to 'zero'. In real life it is rather hard for anyone to see such actions in motion.. but thanks to technology and people like Frank who take time to explain this further. In the video it is really cool to see the ball actually having no velocity at all and standing still before it starts to fall vertically down because of gravity. His experiments with the buggy not moving from its original position is very interesting too (below). This experiment can easily be replicated in any classroom.
Taking this a step further, Frank's slides contain various cases of relative velocity in action, that students can actually vote on. A similar lesson is on my agenda when I teach during winter. I would love to use Socrative for students to vote on.
I have commented on this blog post and also subscribed to his blog site. It is amazing to see so much out there, for us Physics teachers to get excited about.
This looks like a really cool blog. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteI like his section on "pseudoteaching". He defines it as "something you realize you’re doing after you’ve attempted a lesson which from the outset looks like it should result in student learning, but upon further reflection, you realize that the very lesson itself was flawed and involved minimal learning." This is an issue that definitely cuts across disciplines. How often have we taught a lesson, and thought the kids had really learned to do something, but in the end, they had no idea how to apply it? All the learned was rote procedural methods, without accessing any Higher Order Thinking such as evaluating the method or judging when to apply it to a novel situation?
The video you posted is really cool. I hovered my mouse over the red car and saw that yes, indeed, it stays in the same place! Plus, I'm sure the kids will get a kick out of the sounds of the slow-motion portion, but it's not so distracting that they'll stop paying attention to the movement (or lack thereof) of the car.
This is a very nice resource that you found, Subha. If I've mentioned this to you already, please forgive me, but I'm moved to think of a fellow MACer aqnd Physics educator who has a very cool entreprenurial and creative enterprise going called "Flipping Physics." Jonathan Thomas-Palmer is a terrifically creative guy who is creating some marvelous videos for use by teachers who are "flipping" their classes (students take in lecture content at home through videos, and class time is spent fielding questions and doing hands-on activities. His work is delightful.
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