Monthly Archives: October 2012

Momentum

This past week the students explored the ideas of “vectorial motion” or what we now call momentum.  We explored the ideas of the force-impulse relationship. Here you can see Sara H. throwing an egg at a sheet, yet it does not break, as the time of impact is slowed.   Later in the period we […]

BU SAT team goes in Zero G

I wanted to post a link to some BU undergrads who got to fly in Ellington Field in zero gravity. They are members for the BU SAT group. Every summer 1-3 BU Academy students actually work as part of this group.  This past summer, Harrison K. worked in the group and he is doing his […]

Peer Instruction, NASA, and Sabrage

This morning I visited a calculus class at BU taught by Professor Brian Lukoff.  Brian works with Eric Mazur at Harvard and uses the peer instruction model.  He taught his class using Learning Catalytics.  Similar to InterLACE, the teacher would ask a question.  Each student (instead of groups of students) had their own laptop and […]

Vectors and Earthquakes

The main excitement of the week has been a treasure hunt.  The students were challenged to work together and have their robots venture out into the Earthquake prone landscape known as the physics classroom to find buried house-points.  I will confess, one House was able to get their robots to the treasure in 50 minutes.   […]

Robotics update mid October

Yesterday was  a great example of our outreach.  Several of our students led a LEGO Mindstorm programming workshop for the Educational Forum at BUA.  There were over 30 middle school students who attended the workshops. The students have been busy building VEX and FTC robots, and preparing for our Lego League Tournament.  As you prepare […]

Nobel Prize, Vectors and Newton’s Laws

So this week, they awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. David Wineland from U. Colorado received the prize for his work in Quantum Optics.   17 years ago when I was applying to grad school for Photonics programs, I was actually decided between Colorado, Arizona, and B.U.   That was just when Colorado was making a lot […]

Lab Reports

So I just finished reading the first drafts of the introductions of the physics students lab reports.  After reading and giving feedback on almost 50 of these reports, my mind is numb.  A few of the students are naturals.  The rest, we have only four years to get them to the point where they can […]