The first thing from AAPT that I would like to mention is SAM Animation that Brian Gravel demonstrated. SAM is free software that allows for the easy creation of stop motion animations. Basically, you use a web camera to take successive pictures and put them together as a movie. The software includes features (I think they call it an onion view) to see your previous frame while you are making the next frame. I think the software also lets you do time-lapse videos (which I think are awesome but they take lots of patience).
Fine, it is cool, but what do you do with it? Besides make movies with legos, I can think of a few: (as hinted by the SAM people)
- Have students make stop motion movies of an object in projectile motion. The SAM people have students use a whiteboard as the background. The awesome thing about this is that it is like the opposite of video analysis. Essentially this is the same thing as making an animation in vpython, but with no coding.
- Brian also had a great suggestion of making a time-lapse video of bacteria growth and showing that it is exponential.
- Students can use this to make any kind of animation. Brian said that he gives students "props" to use such as people and arrows. You could for instance demonstrate circular motion with the arrow indicating the direction of the acceleration.
- Finally, this can be used as a presentation tool by students.
Sometime, I am going to make a video, I am sure I will post it for you to see.
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