September 30, 2013 at 11:06 pm
This weekend I went to Marist College for the first Northeast Regional American Association of Physics Teachers meeting in over 10 years. There were members from the New England, New Jersey, and New York Section! Our keynote speaker was David Maiullo who runs the demo room at Rutgers University, which means he gets paid to […]
September 30, 2013 at 10:44 pm
Last week, several students on the robotics team went down to the Boston University School of Management to meet with about 20 graduate students there who rained down great ideas for our team to raise $$$. This is one area where our team has been weak, so many thanks to Mark Grimm and Matt Uvena […]
September 26, 2013 at 10:25 pm
Over the spring/summer I was fortunate to be working with one of the early EV3 kits and was able to write a book, which I think, will be ideal for FLL teams, both students and coaches. The book contains step-by-step build instructions made with L-Draw, screen shots, and downloadable EV3 code. I go into detail […]
September 25, 2013 at 11:08 pm
For some reason, BUA has a new A Capella club. Here is something that just came out on YouTube worth watching. A physics A capella song about gravity. If they can sing this, I would be very impressed. Very impressed. For those of you who think you can win house points by singing badly…don’t try. […]
September 22, 2013 at 10:05 pm
In physics last week we explored gravity and acceleration. Often the students were frustrated with my vague smiles when I refused to answer their questions and forced them to put forth ideas whether they be right or wrong. Why would I do this? The lone sophomore in the class wisely said that we only […]
September 16, 2013 at 10:15 pm
This week we programmed LEGO Mindstorm robots with LabView and designed an experiment to measure the speed of the robot. As a note to parents, it is important for students to take the content learning seriously. Many students were unprepared for our first class using the robots. I suggest taking notes on the text readings, […]
September 11, 2013 at 2:56 pm
This week we finished out discussion of inertia and explored ideas behind statics and equilibrium. I was impressed when I came in on Monday and found that Slytherin House hung a snake at the back of the room. And one nice Slytherin 1st year (is that possible?) made some blueberry muffins. This week we explored […]
September 7, 2013 at 10:20 pm
So LEGO finally came out with a female scientist! You can read about this on the ABC website. From ABC: “Professor C. Bodin, Lego’s first female scientist, took the limelight this weekend as Lego introduced its Minifigure Series 11 to the world. Professor C. Bodin comes equipped with an impressive resume, winning the “coveted […]
September 6, 2013 at 10:22 pm
This week after our brief introduction we explored the ideas of inertia in class. One of the students expertly summer up what inertia is. To quote her InterLACE posting “Objects are lazy unless you motivate them.” Of course, why are objects lazy? If we look at our textbook definitions, it might say that inertia is […]
September 3, 2013 at 9:24 pm
Today was the first day of Physics Class. Another eager group of freshmen. We shall see how they meet up compared to the class of 2016. Alas, there is no Gryffindor this year. In the news today: Frederick Pohl Died. My favorite book by him is Gateway a great space exploration story. When I went […]
