Teach Fzx Tuesday - Practical Quiz Failure

A few years ago I started quizzing students on their ability to use an ammeter and a voltmeter by setting up a circuit and requesting that they measure and record the voltage and current between given points in a circuit.  I knew that some of them had been depending on their lab partners to measure everything so I warned them early and often before I gave them the quiz.

Video instructions on using meters

Freaky Fzx Friday - Multiple Personalities of Light

Gollum vs. Smeagol in "Lord of the Rings."

Light and everything else on the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum have dual personalities just like Gollum.

Freaky Fzx Friday - Gamma or X?

Lead aprons - That's how we know that X-Rays can hurt us.

And we can only have a certain number of X-Rays each year.  The doctor who injected dye into my shoulder last year looked like this during the procedure in preparation for my contrast MRI.

Teach Fzx Tuesday - EZr Equilibrium - Simultaneous Equations

We were always taught to solve all static equilibrium problems using one particular method.  They were to look like this:

But that's complicated and annoying and off-putting so my solution will look different while depending on the same principles.

Teach Fzx Tuesday - EZr Equilibrium - Sample Problem

Static Equilibrium.  Structures.  Balanced Forces.

IF those topics are taught, students are generally presented with equations like this 

and they are expected to do lots of algebra.

Let's ignore the second condition for now and just deal with net forces in the x- and y- directions.  Remember that the net force is zero in each direction.

Freaky Fzx Friday - NUCLEOactivity

Scientists knew so little in 1896.

Photography had been invented decades before and was quickly adopted by scientists.  Exposure time was long and high-speed photography far into the future, but good images could be captured on film plates and used for scientific research.

Earliest Surviving Photograph - 1826 or 1827

Cathode ray tubes were commonly used for experiments since they emitted particles and rays that no one understood.  They were working on it, but nobody got it.  No one had even discovered a single subatomic particle - the electron was first in 1897.

Teach Fzx Tuesday - 'g'

'g' is NOT the "acceleration of gravity."

I mean, it is, but it's also known as the "gravitational field strength."  Teaching FORCES FIRST and starting with static equilibrium has convinced me not to use "acceleration of gravity" yet for several reasons.