Bulletin of the American Physical Society
77th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Section of the APS
Volume 55, Number 10
Wednesday–Saturday, October 20–23, 2010; Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Session JC: Physics Education |
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Chair: Michael Cherry, Louisiana State University Room: Nicholson Hall 118 |
Friday, October 22, 2010 3:45PM - 3:57PM |
JC.00001: Teaching Temperature with Technology Michael Schillaci In recent years it has become very popular to introduce computational tools and/or simulations into the classroom. While the intention of this classroom addition is often meant to help elucidate a particular physical phenomena, teachers at ALL levels --- whether graduate or undergraduate, secondary- or middle-school --- may miss important \emph{teaching moments} by either relying upon or struggling with the technology! I will demonstrate this phenomena with a sample teaching module developed at our instiitution that seeks to discover the relationship between temperature and latitude by having students gather data (e.g., average monthly temperature for a chosen city) from various world wide web resources. This task may be very difficult for students and teachers for reasons ranging from slow connection speeds to an inability to plot and interpret data.I will wrap up by demonstarting a simple Maple routine that will produce the graphs easily and discuss ways in which this kind of top-down solution may be the best bet for using and teaching technology at all levels. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, October 22, 2010 3:57PM - 4:09PM |
JC.00002: Spotting fake videos with Tracker Video Analysis Rhett Allain Is that youtube video real or fake? This question comes up all the time. In this talk, I will briefly introduce Tracker Video Analysis (a free, java-based application) and show how it can be used to determine the validity of videos. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, October 22, 2010 4:09PM - 4:21PM |
JC.00003: Grade Level Expectations: Do They Prepare Students for Introductory College Chemistry? M.M. Davies The Grade Level Expectations (GLEs) established by the Louisiana Department of Education are intended to ensure that students are prepared for introductory college level chemistry. A sample of students in an introductory Chemistry class at Louisiana State University were tested to confirm that knowledge of the GLEs (chemical concept inventory pre-test and post-test score and normalized gain) correlated with performance in CHEM 1201 (average exam score and final exam score). No significant correlations were found. In-state Louisiana public school students and out-of-state/private school students were then considered separately with the assumption that Louisiana public school students were educated using the GLEs as the framework for their Chemistry education while out-of-state/private school students were not. It was determined that both groups of students performed statistically similarly in every category with the exception of their final exam score, with the out-of-state/private school students performing better. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, October 22, 2010 4:21PM - 4:33PM |
JC.00004: Effective Lesson Planning: Field Trips in the Science Curriculum C.R. Rieger Science field trips can positively impact and motivate students. However, if a field trip is not executed properly, with appropriate preparation and follow-up reinforcement, it can result in a loss of valuable educational time and promote misconceptions in the students. This study was undertaken to determine if a classroom lesson before an out-of-the-classroom activity would affect learner gain more or less than a lesson after the activity. The study was based on the immersive theater movie ``Earth's Wild Ride'' coupled with a teacher-led Power Point lesson. The participants in the study were students in a sixth grade physical science class. The order of lessons showed no detectable effect on final learner outcomes. Based on pre- and post-testing, improvement in mean learning gain came from the teacher-led lesson independent of the movie. The visit to the immersive theater, however, had significant positive effects that did not show up in the quantitative results of the testing. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, October 22, 2010 4:33PM - 4:45PM |
JC.00005: Einstein in Hollywood: Capturing the Scientific Minds of Movie Buffs Chadwick Young The film industry captures the minds of most students today. Americans spend one-half of their leisure time watching television, and students may often neglect their studies to catch the latest episode of Desperate Housewives or the new release of Leatherheads. Science teachers are challenged to compete with these seemingly unconquerable forces. One alternative to battling the influence of multimedia in its onslaught against the scientific minds of our youth is to embrace these monsters and tame them. By relating what the students know best (who kissed who in Walk the Line) with what they know least (thermodynamics, e.g.), teachers form connections in the minds of their students that will last for many years. In this session, the presenter will demonstrate an inquiry-based method employing clips from popular movies to learn physics. He will show movie clips from several different areas of physics, examine the particular clips in light of those physical principles, and discuss how to use the clips in the classroom. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, October 22, 2010 4:45PM - 4:57PM |
JC.00006: Messages about the Messengers: Reception and Review of ``Astronomy's New Messengers,'' The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory's Interactive Public Exhibition Brooke Rankins, Marco Cavagli\`{a} The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) is an endeavor to directly confirm the existence of gravitational waves, funded by the National Science Foundation. As a publicly funded research project, it is both within its directive and within its best interest to educate and inform the public at large of its efforts. The Education and Public Outreach (EPO) group within LIGO, under the direction of Marco Cavagli\`{a}, has developed an interactive exhibit to educate, explain and showcase LIGO to the general public. The exhibit, entitled ``Astronomy's New Messengers,'' debuted at the World Science Festival in New York City, and includes features to explain gravitational waves and their possible sources, an interferometer, the space-time fabric model, and the difficulties in identifying a gravitational wave. The exhibit visitors were asked to complete a survey about their experience at ``Astronomy's New Messengers,'' and the presentation will report the survey results, and explore the full exhibit's reception by the general public. [Preview Abstract] |
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