Session E4: AAPT Invited Session

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Through the centuries, music has motivated and inspired physicists and mathematicians, from Pythagoras, to Fourier and Sommerfeld. A common theme to this interest in music is found in spectroscopy – loosely speaking, the study of frequencies. In this talk, I will demonstrate some experiments on acoustic spectroscopy from my course, The Physics of Music. These experiments show the connection between sound, music, and modern spectroscopy, one of the most powerful techniques in current research. I argue that by teaching a useful technique for gathering knowledge, one demonstrates more about the scientific method than by teaching various facts about the natural world.   

Saturday, October 20, 2007

A teaching/learning strategy that I have developed over the years for high school students involves the use of photographic images of ordinary objects or scenes to help engage students in the intrigue and beauty of physics. The images help focus classroom discussions, raise curiosity levels among students, and promote creativity of thinking. The photographs can be used in a variety of ways, including assessment, framing discussions, homework assignment, and constructive classroom games. This presentation will describe the various ways photography can be used and will model some techniques. Dozens of ``physics images'' will be shown.