This is just a quick re-cap of information from the April 20th meeting. We promised links and such, so I wanted to make sure they showed up. More detailed notes will be coming soon(ish).

DMAPT Meeting – December 2, 2009, Oakland Christian School

Host: Bryan Crump

DMAPT members met at Oakland Christian School on Wednesday, December 2^nd.  Bryan Crump was our host.  The meeting focused on labs and demos related to momentum/collisions. 

Member announcements:

·      Don Pata noted that the workshop on using inquiry in the classroom and generating productive class discussion presented by Nicole Murawski and Laura Ritter on December 1^st was awesome!   Don recommended that all attend future workshops.

·      Jeff Conn gave an update on the planned Astronomy BA program at Wayne State and provided information brochures.  The program will offer research experience for undergraduates and will be the only one of its kind offered in Michigan.  Interest in the program has been very strong.  Students with a BA in Astronomy would likely pursue careers with NASA, or enter graduate astrophysics studies.   Per Jeff, the recently initiated Biomedical Physics program at Wayne State is also going very well and is quite popular with students.

·       Jeff Conn also reported that a new digital planetarium is coming to Wayne State. 

·      Jeff informed the DMAPT members that the people who were interested in participating in the Supernova Search project will be getting an email from Dave Cinabro detailing the next steps in the project.  The program is waiting funding.

·      Al Gibson reported that the Galileoscopes have been ordered.   It was agreed that these would be incorporated into our April meeting.

·      Jeff Conn noted that Saturday, December 6^th, 2009, is Noel Night in downtown Detroit.  This is an annual family-oriented event showcasing several institutions.  Wayne State does a planetarium show.  All venues are free of charge. 

Upcoming calendar events:

·      Nicole Murawski and Steve Dickie will be presenting an all day workshop on video analysis.  Date and location have not been finalized, but it will be on a Saturday in the spring at either the Wayne County RESA or at Royal Oak High School.

·      Al Gibson and Laura Ritter are presenting “Quantum Physics and Dark Matter” at the MSTA conference.  They are also presenting a unit on two dimensional motion and circular motion.  Both presentations will be on Saturday, March 6, 2010.

·      The DMAPT make-and-take session (with the Galileoscopes) at the MSTA meeting is scheduled for Friday morning, March 5, 2010.  Volunteers are needed to help with the session. 

Member sharing:

·      Don Pata shared a demo that he uses for collisions.  He starts by telling his students that they are in a car and a collision with a tree is inevitable.  He asks them whether they prefer to bounce off the tree or stick to it.  Most students will choose to bounce off the tree.  Don then uses “happy and sad balls” (http://www.arborsci.com/SearchResult.aspx?KeyWords=happy%20sad%20balls) to simulate the bouncing and sticking collisions.  Don hangs each of the balls from strings attached to a ring stand.  He stands a section of a 2 x 4 (approximately 1 foot long) vertically just in front of the balls.  Don then pulls each ball back and releases it so it collides with the 2 x 4.

·      Don follows up by asking the students to explain why the bouncing collision is worse, knowing what they know about momentum.  He has the students estimate the velocity of the ball before the collision and calculate the Dv.  Don then brings them back to the car collision scenario to reconsider their original answer.

·      Don next displayed a fan cart with a plate “sail” on it and asked what will happen when the fan is switched on.   Don noted that the Pasco pamphlet explains that the air from the fan hits the sail and bounced off, creating a Dv and increased force.  Is this a good momentum demonstration like Pasco suggests?

Roxanne Crabill is short of text books. If you have any examination copies of 2009 Holt Physics you're not using her students would thank you.

Laura Ritter, our president, opened with introductions and and a discussion of the summer AAPT meeting and then talked about Mark and Don's thoughts on starting a monthly meeting with newer physics teachers to help support them. When there's more information is available I'll pass it on.

Greg Scheffler was elected as our New VP. Thanks Greg for volunteering!



Dave Cinabro - Wayne State talked about the High School Super Nova Search. He introduced this project at a meeting last year. Right now he's been working to get an NSF grant to fund the project. Dave will send me more information for the web site. If you would like to be considered as a Super Nova search site please email Dave. About half of the super novas discovered are discovered by amateurs.

Our November meeting is currently planned to be held at De La Salle. There was a discussion of doing an optics theme with a telescope make and take. We'd probably get the Galilescope, a very high quality scope for only $20!

Chris Deyo headed up a curriculum writing workshop for physics, undertaken in Oakland Schools, based on the new Michigan standards. They produced a comprehensive 14 unit document. Each unit has at least six activities that can be done with students and everything is already aligned with the standards! You can find the document on the Oakland Schools Science Resource site (scroll down). Or here's the direct link to the pdf.

Brad Roth - Spoke about programs at Oakland University. The have a new program in medical physics that you might want to tell your students about. Lots of research happens at Oakland and undergrad students often get a chance to help out.

George Martins, from Oakland University, has a group of students who can present at high schools, complete with Nikola Tesla! They gave a fun presentation and demos they themselves came up with and put together. You should feel free to contact George if you're interested in learning what he and his students can do for your students.

Last night was another fun meeting. We started with a short presentation on Telematics by Mark and Don. Telematics deals with making "smart" cars. After the presentation we got to play with the remote controlled cars they use with their students. They ran us through a quick version of the constructivist labs they do with their students. It was great fun. We were trying to experimentally determine the max speed, acceleration while speeding up, acceleration while slowing down, and acceleration while turning. While doing these experiments we had to do the same trouble shooting the students would have to do. We also saw other factors we could test to bring in other physics concepts. It was really a great experience and makes me wonder how much a classroom set of these cars cost.

After the telematics demonstration we went to dinner. At dinner Georg Raithel told about the upcomming Physics Olympiad being held at the University of Michigan. Registration is free but the deadline is today (April 25th). If you don't manage to get registered in time email Georg there may still be a chance to get in.

Dave Barnes from Arbor Scientific was there showing off some of the new stuff they're considering for their catalog. Many of the demos centered around static electicity. You can see some of the stuff that was shown off it the latest CoolStuff Newsletter. Dave also showed off a cool litle helicopter that is perfect for flying above a digital balance to answer the question of how much force will you measure when it's hovering. As it turns out we don't get the expected answer of exactly the weight of the helicopter. It's about 35% higher. If it was flown in an enclosed container we would get the expected weight.

After dinner it was my turn to ramble on about the Wiimote Whiteboard. I also realized I never gave out the link to my instructions. I put them up on a web page for everyone. This was the same thing I showed off in February, but this time I brought parts for IR LED pens and such. I also passed out CDs of required software. If you try this and run into problems don't hesitate to send me an email (falconphysics@gmail.com) to ask questions. I also mentioned Animoto, a cool website for making slide shows. Here's an example of one I put together with pictures from our 50th anniversary bash.

I (Steve Dickie) got to host this one, but as usual I had about 10 hours worth of material but only an hour worth of time to present, so I didn't get to everything I'd like to have done. If you're interested in seeing more of what I do then you might want to check out my blogs. I've been doing a technology in education blog for three or four years (Teaching With Technology) and more recently I've started doing one that's more focused on science education (FLOSScience). Over the next few days I'll be collecting notes and links on everything I presented and I'll put them here.

As you may also know. We tried something new and streamed the whole meeting live on the internet via Ustream. Ustream also recorded the boradcast, but it doesn't seem to play well from the net. I've downloaded it and as soon as I get it edited down a little I'll post it up.

Here are some Wiimote links to whet your appetite.
Wiimote

• Where to go for help: http://www.wiimoteproject.com/index.php?action=forum
• penteractive.us - $8 pen, $37 ceiling mounting system
  
• Windows (you will need .Net 3.5 from Microsoft)
  
• Smoothboard: http://www.smoothboard.net/
• Linktivity Presenter: http://www.linktivity.com/presenter.html
  
• Mac OSX
• http://www.uweschmidt.org/wiimote-whiteboard
• Magic Pen: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/27332
• Darwin Remote: http://darwiin-remote.sourceforge.net/
• Need a very bright IR LED. I got mine from Mouser
• Both the windows and mac software all for you to use the wiimote as a three-axis accelerometer for data collection or as an interactive whiteboard system

We had a great meeting last night (12/10/08). There were four (maybe 5) science education students there and at lest one who is specifically going for a physics minor.

We set a date for the February meeting for the 3rd at Divine Child High School in Dearborn. The theme will be technology in teaching.

Demos for the Night:

Paul brought his toys. He highly recommends toys for teaching physics. Now, we all recommend toys when teaching physics, but Paul truly embraces their use. Be buys lots and in bulk so the kids get to play. He likes toys because they tend to be cheaper than the same stuff sold from science supply companies, although often not quite as repeatable. He showed a variety of car types. Some that replace those constant velocity cars and some that simply roll that can be sent down a ramp but are big enough for a motion sensor to see.

One toy he showed off he still hasn't figured out how to make it work was a frog that climbs a chain. He figured he could do elevator labs and has tried to use motion and force sensors with it but the data are very messy. I hadn't thought about it till just now, I wonder if it might be workable with some sort of video analysis.

Paul recommends Joissu for buying toys. They have really low prices so it makes it possible to get classroom sets of may different toys.

Steve (Rae) got up next and piggy backed on the toy descriptions. He has two guns that shoot suction cup darts. One of the darts has a steel ball bearing glued to the end. He asks questions like: "Which would you rather be shot with? When fired horizontally, which dart will hit the ground first? If I point them straight down and fire, which will hit the ground first?" These questions lead to discussions of force, mass, and acceleration.

Dart guns like these are getting harder to find, and Steve says as they age they get much less reliable, but if you can find some they are really useful for getting across some basic concepts.

Next up I (Steve Dickie) jumped in. Being a ham at heart I probably talked for too long. I stared by showing off my hand crank generator. Science supply companies sell one called Genecon, but these cost about $50 ea. I made one from a hand crank flashlight. These flashlight can be found in a number of places for fairly cheap. Someone mentioned that Home Depot is selling them right now for 3 for $10. I'll be going out after school to buy a pile my self. Anyway if you're interested in doing this yourself it is really not too hard. I have instructions on my own site and I'll be improving them at some point soon.

Next I shared an idea which was one I stole and adapted from Mark Davids. Mark has showed, in the past, how you can take a cheap solar cell and attach it to a portable amplifier to "hear" the 120 Hz flashing of classroom lights. All you need to do is solder the solar cell to a cable from some cheap headphones and plug it in. I realized I can plug the same cable into the microphone jack on a computer and use an oscilloscope program in order to see the fluctuations in the light. I use a free program called Visual Analyser for this. I also use another free program called Audacity as a recording oscilloscope. For some ideas on how you can do a variety of labs/demos with a computer a less than $10 in parts and how you can make your own solarcell sensor you can check out my web page.

Last, but certainly not least was Laura. Laura shared a list of questions she uses with her students. The questions are designed to have two possible answers, the correct one and one that is a typical misconception. Students then must pick one side and she has them stand up and take physical sides. Their task is to then convince people on the other side to cross the lines. Laura observes and listens. By the time they're done she has a very good idea of what they know and what they don't know about a subject.

Laura also shared a link to the PhET site. I'm not going to tell you what this is. You just need to go there and look around. You'll be glad you did.

Our 50th anniversary party was outstanding. It was hosted at Wayne State University. We started with a bit of history, presented by Mark Davids. Then we moved into our meal, which was arranged by Mike MacIntyre.