Oblate Spheroid

I’m in the middle of writing another post, but had to blog this first. It’s just too cool to pass up. Ever wondered what it’s like to be in a car that’s hit by lightning? It happened to Judy Lew, who sent her story and photos to UW meteorologist Cliff Mass. Cliff posted it on [...]

From one of the reviews: “And in case you find yourself in my position, I can confidently report that Duncan Hines Classic Yellow Cake Mix is also a completely inadequate raw material for the same project. Not to mention the mess it makes in the centrifuges.” via Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: Uranium Ore.

From the San Jose Mercury News: “Ground penetrating radar is used on the next-door neighbor’s property of kidnap suspects Phillip and Nancy Garrido Friday Sept. 19, 2009 at the site in unincorporated Antioch, Calif. Investigators also tore down a shed in the Garrido backyard and hauled away the debris.” Photo credit: Karl Mondon/Staff. The San [...]

I’d forgotten about this website from Rutgers – a collection of demos and experiments I’d used frequently my first time I teaching physics. My favorites are in the “Surprising data, puzzles, problems” section. Learning Cycles on Surprising data, puzzles, problems.

It’s not showing up on Google’s logo page, but today’s Google banner is in honor of Oersted’s linkage between electrical current and magnetism. Hans Christian Ørsted – Google Search.

As a follow-up to my post on the next-generation iPhone with a magnetometer… here’s the story of a this-generation iPhone used as an accelerometer in a model rocket. Way cool. The iPhone Rocket: The Story and Data Of How An iPhone Hit 1300ft.

UMD Physics Education Group’s redesigned website. Collections of good problems (particularly the Alternative Homework Assignments and the two sections of “Thinking Problems”), a set of open-ended problem-based labs, and demo worksheets. Context-rich problems from the University of Minnesota (see the “On-line archive”). MagnetLab at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at UF. Look at the [...]

I’ve been noticing more and more people using the awesome free program Tracker for video analysis. But what about audio analysis? I’m teaching the third quarter of physics soon (waves, optics, and thermodynamics), and have been looking for ways to get students to do some basic acoustical measurements and processing. Clearly they’ll need some software. [...]

I’ve been reworking some of my intro physics labs so that they are simpler and more straightforward. Personally, I feel pretty strongly that the two main types of physics lab activity – exploration and verification – are both important to a student’s education. I want to include more exploratory activities in my classes (perhaps instead [...]

An insightful email from Boris Korsunsky, a high school physics teacher,  just came through the PHYSLRNR mailing list. This excerpt (emphasis is mine) gave me pause: Besides, even if the hypothetical professor is well-versed in PER [physics education research - ed.] and enthusiastic about teaching, what is important at the college level may not be [...]