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What happens when you take some basic, introductory physics and apply them to cool things you see? Dot Physics happens. This blog looks at movies, experiments, demos and other topics typically aimed at the introductory physics level.
Rhett Allain is an Associate Professor of Physics at Southeastern Louisiana University. He
enjoys teaching and talking about physics. Sometimes he takes things apart and can't
put them back together.
Category: education
Basically, one of the local School Board wants to use a learning tool (Interval Testing) as a teacher evaluation tool. The Interval Testing program gives students spaced out evaluations through out the year to help them (and teachers) assess the preparedness of the students.
Posted by Rhett Allain at 10:20 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: education
This is something I use at the beginning of a semester. I ask the class: "How are you an expert?" What is an expert? Let me call an expert someone that is comfortable answering questions about that particular topic.
Posted by Rhett Allain at 8:28 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: attack
Oh crap. I have worked so hard to set up this containment system and now they are going to shut it off. This is going to suck, big. Oh, I know I took some short cuts and didn't follow all the rules. This system has problems, but it is the best we have.
Posted by Rhett Allain at 2:46 PM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: education
So, what would happen if there were no grades? Here are some thoughts.
Posted by Rhett Allain at 9:37 AM • 29 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: DIY
The basic idea of the book is to look at how the author (Mark Frauenfelder) started doing more and more Do-it-yourself type stuff (DIY). He goes through his efforts to grow his own stuff, raise chickens, build guitars and stuff like that. Very enjoyable read.
Posted by Rhett Allain at 1:29 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: cool
Basically, you enter some info about the class - like how often it meets, how many classes you have skipped, when is the next test and stuff. The calculator then tells you if you should go to class or not. Brilliant.
Posted by Rhett Allain at 8:37 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: education
Perhaps the best thing about The Mechanical Universe is that it might be the best that traditional lecturing can provide. Oh, I know it isn't quite the same. Students can't ask questions while watching a video. But the main point is that if you want to go with some type of traditional lecture style format for a class, you would be hard pressed to do better than this.
Posted by Rhett Allain at 9:58 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: education
Normally, we would share departmental news (which we did) and introduce new faculty. There are no new faculty and haven't been any new hires for quite some time now. Anyway, there are some things to report.
Posted by Rhett Allain at 2:31 PM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: education
I am seriously late on this stuff. First, by clickers I mean student response systems. In a previous post, I stated how much I like these things. The basic idea (in case you have never heard of them) is that...
Posted by Rhett Allain at 5:30 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: education
They are out there. That is what lead me to a thought. How many great teachers are there? What percent of the math teachers do cool stuff? I am going to estimate this in a fermi-problem type fashion.
Posted by Rhett Allain at 1:13 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
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