What Questions Do You Have? (WQDYH?)

What Questions Do You Have? (WQDYH?)

Multiple Contributors  //  Join Us - click on "contribute."

 
Apr 6 / 2:25pm

SETI MESSAGE

by Frank Noschese

Can you decode the following extraterrestrial message? Is it real or fake? How can you tell?

(download)

 
Mar 7 / 9:23pm

How Hard Can It Be?

by Glen Westbroek
Do you enjoy the movie "UP" as much as I do? If so, you might enjoy seeing watching this video clip:

I plan on showing it to my students and asking them to explain how they would get the house back down. I can imaging a lot of students providing different ideas. I would then ask these students how they could investigate or challenge their predictions.

Questions I might consider important for a Physics class:
1. How much Helium would it take to lift this house?
2. What volume of Helium does each Weather Balloon hold?
3. How can the mass of the house be determined?

What other questions do you think would be good to ask students to engage them with this video?

Filed under  //  implementation   physics  
 
Feb 5 / 7:59pm

Austin Church Gap | MetaFilter

by Jim Peterson
There has to be something here for physics. Does anyone live near
enough o Austin to get some data for this?

http://www.metafilter.com/100274/Austin-Church-Gap


--Jim
@weathertation
http://weathertation.posterous.com

 
Jan 27 / 2:18pm

Medieval Drug Smuggling

by Marta Toran

Now this is an interesting use of physics and engineering knowledge... Did they think they were really going to get away with it though? That thing is not exactly pocket-sized...

I'm not a physicist, but could it be used in discussions about forces, trajectories, etc?

 

Filed under  //  engineering   physics  
 
Jan 17 / 11:59pm

Self-balancing pogo stick

by occam98

So what are the wheels doing if they never touch the ground?

Filed under  //  physics  
 
Jan 14 / 2:42am

Conservation of Energy on a roller coaster

by Frank Lee
You drop a marble down a hill. When is it rolling the fastest?... A) Top of the hill, B) Half way down the hill, C) At the bottom of the hill

Many students answer B or C. Why B? My guess: Roller coasters. It *feels* the fastest on your way down the hill.

I give a quick blurb about how we can't trust our body to tell us that's the fastest part since we don't feel speed, we feel acceleration (just like in a car, you feel the car speed up, but sitting in a car going 80mph doesn't feel any different than a car going 20mph).

Next, there are many ways to prove the object moves the fastest at the bottom, including a real setup using photogates, video analysis etc, but I'll be honest: I'm just not going to put the time into that. Here's the quick (but maybe inferior) alternative I used today:


(Just about any first-person roller coaster video might work, just search "roller coaster POV" on YouTube... but I like this one because it's HD, it's intense, and you get to remind them what "steep" means. And if there's extra time, I can show them the second half with the reviewer's reactions. Twisty. The ride is twisty.)

Question: How can we tell how fast the roller coaster is going?

What should it sound like when the cart has a low height? What should it sound like when the car increases in height?

Filed under  //  physics  
 
Jan 7 / 4:38am

Energy & Dynamic breaking

by occam98

What is dynamic breaking? And how do you "save" a Newton? 

This clip begs for video analysis, but you have to get past some pretty bad explanations in the clip. But this could provoke some great conversations.. 

Filed under  //  Physics  
 
Dec 31 / 4:43pm

Impossible Motion ... or Anti-Gravity evidence?

by Glen Westbroek

While watching this video, I realized how powerful it could be with my middle school students. I plan to use this as follows:
1. Show the opening of the video and ask students to infer what will happen when a ball is let go (at 3 seconds)
2. Allow for various student responses and discuss possible observation(s) that may cause such inferences.
3. Show the video until it reaches 19 seconds - then PAUSE the video...

4. Ask students to explain what they saw - based only on observations.
5. Ask students to infer what caused their observations to be different than expected.
6. Allow a LOT of time so everyone is able to share their ideas - too often I find one answer leads to a continuation of the discussion.
7. Show the remainder of the video.
8. Allow continued discussion about what was observed and why earlier inferences might have been incorrect.

Filed under  //  Physics   implementation