According to Movable Type, this is entry number 250 for PhysicsStop. A quarter of the way to one thousand entries. Has anyone read them all? Now, according to the statistics I get to see every month, the single most looked at entry by far is this one, on The3is in Three. Why is it so […]
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Things that don’t like water
So, my class of students (well, at least one of them) have done the calculations and think that a centimetre of water is enough to shield a mobile phone from communicating with the nearest mast. Only one way to find out. I’ll bring along a bucket, lots of glad wrap and waterproofing materials to tomorrow’s […]
Continue readingMind games for physicists
Here’s a gem of a paper from Jonathan Tuminaro and Edward Redish. The authors have carried out a detailed analysis of the discussions a group of physics students had when solving a particular problem. They’ve worked hard (the researchers, as well as the students) – the first case study they chose was a conversation 45 […]
Continue readingMobile phone physics
Just occasionally, I have a crazy thought regarding a physics demonstration. This is one that I’m thinking about inflicting on my third year electromagnetism class. We’ve been discussing the way electromagnetic waves travel (or rather, do not travel) through electrical conductors. Basically, conductors allow electric currents to flow in response to an applied electric field (in simple terms […]
Continue readingMy kind of blog
This is what I like to see – a fellow blogger (Brian Clegg) extolling the virtues of physics blogging and tweeting. What’s interesting about Brian’s entry is that he talks about how a blog can trigger a discussion that increases the quality of the original posting. Like peer review for a scientific paper, but informal, […]
Continue readingCopper Conducting Considerable Current
The latest kitchen acquisition (no, we don’t spend all our money on buying things for the kitchen) is decent frying pan. We’ve spent too long with frying pans that are about as flat as the Southern Alps. It’s a copper-based pan, which probably accounts for its expense, with a stainless steel surface. The reason for the […]
Continue readingAppraisal doesn’t equal Evaluation
I spent yesterday afternoon in a seminar discussing how my teaching can be analyzed for its effectiveness. One much used word is ‘appraisal’. Students may recognize that as meaning those annoying questionnaires that get thrown in front of them in the last two minutes of the final lecture of the year, in which they need […]
Continue readingThe wrong kind of question
Following on from yesterday’s discussion of the paper by Gire et al. I’ll remark on one little aspect of this study that physics teachers and lecturers need to take note of. (Well, in my opinion they do, and I’ve got a steadily increasing pile of literature to back me up on this). One of the questions […]
Continue readingHow does a physicist think?
As part of my reading for the Postgraduate Certificate in Tertiary Teaching (henceforth known as the PGCert(TT) ) I’ve come across this article by Gire et al. on how physics students think. The study looked at how closely the physics-thought-processes of undergraduate and graduate students aligned with the physics-thought-processes of practising physicists. In other words, do students […]
Continue readingDoes my teaching work?
This year, I’ve finally decided (more accurately, finally got around to doing it) to undertake a Postgraduate Certificate in Tertiary Teaching. In plain English, that means do some training that actually prepares me to teach at university. "What?" I hear you say – "You mean you haven’t got any qualification to teach at university?". Nope. […]
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