On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 6:03 PM, Caroline Meeks<[email protected]> wrote: > Physics is so cool! One of the students today did a really great job with > it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nseWyxaN6g > Does anyone have an idea for a 1 hour or so lesson I could do with > Physics that would teach a Physics concept and still be incredibly engaging?
Yes, Alan Kay does, and I have extended his version at http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:Gravity.odt. This is actually two or more lessons, starting with a model of constant acceleration in Turtle Art, Etoys, or elsewhere, with work in arithmetic and finite differences leading to geometric insight. Then we take data with the Record activity and analyze it, design further experiments (on balls of different weights, for example), and consider implications. The high point for Alan is the Galileo moment when students have concluded that they can't time separately falling balls accurately, and one of them figures out why they don't need to. My high point was at the Leonardo da Vinci exhibit at The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, where I found out that Leonardo had solved this problem more than a century before Galileo, but couldn't publish. But the Greeks, who had all of the math needed, never even noticed that here was a question posed by every water fountain, a question that contained its own answer. This question is beautifully posed at the San Jose Convention Center across the street http://farm1.static.flickr.com/69/219503234_a943a7b30b.jpg?v=0 and by every water fountain in the corridors of almost every school and most public buildings in this country. Can you discover it? Have you ever heard of it? How often do you see it, but not think about it? We teach science in terms of the model of right answers, of confirmed facts and theories leading to successful technologies. But that is not how scientists work. The most prized discovery for the working scientist is a good question. That is where scientific progress begins. Similarly, in mathematics, proofs of theorems are an essential target, but problems and conjectures are the material one can actually work on. This one topic can lead into several more branches of mathematics, such as projective geometry (the projection of any conic section is a conic section), synthetic and analytic geometry (circles and parabolas come in only one shape each, while ellipses and hyperbolas have an infinite range of shapes); and more physics, including the progression from Galilean relativity to Newtonian, and then to Special and General Relativity, each with a more accurate model of gravity and other matters. I know in a general way how to turn any topic in elementary physics and other sciences and math into such lessons. It takes a bit of work by programmers, teachers, historians, physicists, and others to do up right. > -- > Caroline Meeks > Solution Grove > [email protected] > > 617-500-3488 - Office > 505-213-3268 - Fax > > _______________________________________________ > IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) > [email protected] > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep > -- Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name And Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination. http://earthtreasury.org/worknet (Edward Mokurai Cherlin) _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) [email protected] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
