Science in Faith, A Christian Perspective on Teaching Science (Book Review)

Reviewed Title: Science in Faith, A Christian Perspective on Teaching Science, by A. Jones, et al. (Romford: The Christian Schools\u27 Trust, 1998). 142 pp

Weaving Experimental Skills Throughout the Introductory Laboratory

The laboratory portion of an introductory course sequence can be used to meet a wide variety of goals ranging from illustrating phenomena studied in class, to building intuition about how the physical world works, to confronting the unexpected. Helping students develop experimental skills is a crucial goal that needs to be addressed in lab, especially in light of the fact that most introductory textbooks do not specifically address this topic. Important skills that students should learn in lab include how to analyze data, how to communicate results and the art of designing an experiment. This presentation will discuss how we weave an experimental skills thread through our introductory lab sequence in order to help students develop these key skills. See http://homepages.dordt.edu/zwart/ for implementation details

Privileged Planet (Book Review)

Reviewed Title: The Privileged Planet, by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay W. Richards. Washington DC: Regnery Publishing, 2004. 444 pages, hardcover. $27.95. ISBN 0895260654

A Lab Skills Diagnostic Test

The American Association of Physics Teachers recommends that physics majors have proficiency in the following lab skills: constructing knowledge, modeling, designing experiments, analyzing and visualizing data, and communicating physics. I have developed a brief multiple-choice questionnaire to assess incoming students’ lab skill level in these areas. It was administered as both a pre-test and post-test for the first semester of introductory calculus-based physics. Preliminary results indicate that little improvement on the skills tested occurs without explicit instruction

Heart Attack Physics

I recently had a first-hand opportunity to learn some interesting biomedical applications of physics which provide application examples for introductory classes. While there were many such applications, from X-rays to ultrasonic imaging, I’ll focus on fluid flow through clogged coronary arteries and the use of radioactive materials in a nuclear stress test

Systematic Errors in Video Analysis

Video analysis helps students to connect physical, mathematical, and graphical models with the phenomena that the models represent and improves student kinematic graph interpretation skills. The widespread availability of easy to use software packages like Logger Pro (Vernier), Capstone (PASCO), and Tracker have led to many introductory physics courses adopting video analysis techniques in the classroom. Such uses include high-speed cameras to study rocket launches and other innovative applications. In this paper, we will look at ways in which some common systematic errors can affect outcomes

Two Simple Exponential Decay Experiments

When trying to teach a wide variety of experimental analysis techniques on a tight budget, teachers often have difficulty finding hands-on experiments which illustrate exponential decay and provide for the teaching of semi-log plotting skills. The authors have developed the following inexpensive and easy-to-implement experiments to meet that need

Systematic Errors in Intro Lab Video Analysis

In video analysis lab experiments, students frequently find large discrepancies between results based on self-filmed videos and expected values (e.g. for g determined by a fit to projectile motion data). These differences are frequently far larger than the uncertainty calculated from their fit. Using an inexpensive point-and-shoot camera with a 4x optical zoom to record video, we investigated two possible causes of this error: the effect of placing the reference meter stick at a different object-to-camera distance and the effect of the motion of interest being in a plane not perpendicular to the camera lens. When we observed these phenomena for wide angle, normal, and telephoto focal length settings we found systematic errors as large as 40%. Based on our findings, we make recommendations for minimizing these errors