Scaffolding and Two Bells
Here's your physics wrap-up for the week:
Physics Today is carrying an interview with James Gates about his research and career. It is a quick read, but very interesting. Meanwhile, Physics World carried an essentially-an-interview article about Jocelyn Bell Burnell [paywall].
The 180 blogs started, I think, as a way for teachers to reflect and share their new approaches in the classroom. It doesn't seem like there are many blogs this year, but lots of people are posting to Twitter under the #teach180 hashtag. It's a great way to see all the clever and original things that teachers are doing, like this collision prediction from Nicole Murawski or this projectile practical from Monica Owens.
There were a couple interesting articles about scaffolding this month in the Physical Review: Physics Education Research. Dawkins, Hedgeland, and Jordan at Open University report on scaffolding in test questions, with two main conclusions. First, that male students benefit more from diagrams of 2-dimensional motion. Second, that in some specific cases abundant scaffolding (see image below) reduces the gender gap compared to a question without these measures.
The other is a close analysis of a single question about the electric field around concentric conducting shells, by Maries, Lin, and Singh. After observing and categorizing student difficulties, two scaffolds were introduced: requiring that students plot the field piecewise, and that they check the endpoints. Students clearly benefitted from the piecewise plotting scaffold, but the additional mental burden of checking the endpoints eliminated the value of both scaffolds. I think the conclusion is that we need to be careful to "min-max" our scaffolds: maximum value from minimum additional work.
A nice article in PR:PER from Gregorcic, Planinsic, and Etkina discusses how students use hand gestures to convey meaning while talking about physics. Watch for it from your students! This work was done using the excellent program Algodoo, which is a bit like MS Paint with the physics engine of a video game -- and quite pedagogically useful (this website might help you get started).
There's a great mystery right now about some sort of mystery ailment that has affected staff at US and Canadian embassies in Cuba, and has now also been reported at a hotel just off the Malécon. Initially, the headaches, auditory oddities, and memory issues were believed to have been caused by some sort of sound weapon, but it just doesn't add up. There's lots of speculation, and that means lots of people thinking about the physics of what is going on!
One of the best pieces of physics over the past couple generations, I think, was the development and eventual testing of Bell's Theorem. It's subtle, and with very deep implications. I think MinutePhysics does a pretty decent job with it, in a new video.
And lastly, in case you missed it, Wilson, Wilson, and Low have an article in the Times Education Supplement that argues that a significant part of the gender gap in physics scores is because boys have more experience with projectile motion that girls. However, since girls who enroll in the "hyper-masculine environment" of an Australian military school exhibit the same gap, that experience cannot come from sports. Instead, they suggest, the extra projectile experience comes from childhood urination. I revere unorthodox explanations, but this one strains credulity.
- Danny
Physics Today is carrying an interview with James Gates about his research and career. It is a quick read, but very interesting. Meanwhile, Physics World carried an essentially-an-interview article about Jocelyn Bell Burnell [paywall].
The 180 blogs started, I think, as a way for teachers to reflect and share their new approaches in the classroom. It doesn't seem like there are many blogs this year, but lots of people are posting to Twitter under the #teach180 hashtag. It's a great way to see all the clever and original things that teachers are doing, like this collision prediction from Nicole Murawski or this projectile practical from Monica Owens.
There were a couple interesting articles about scaffolding this month in the Physical Review: Physics Education Research. Dawkins, Hedgeland, and Jordan at Open University report on scaffolding in test questions, with two main conclusions. First, that male students benefit more from diagrams of 2-dimensional motion. Second, that in some specific cases abundant scaffolding (see image below) reduces the gender gap compared to a question without these measures.
The other is a close analysis of a single question about the electric field around concentric conducting shells, by Maries, Lin, and Singh. After observing and categorizing student difficulties, two scaffolds were introduced: requiring that students plot the field piecewise, and that they check the endpoints. Students clearly benefitted from the piecewise plotting scaffold, but the additional mental burden of checking the endpoints eliminated the value of both scaffolds. I think the conclusion is that we need to be careful to "min-max" our scaffolds: maximum value from minimum additional work.
A nice article in PR:PER from Gregorcic, Planinsic, and Etkina discusses how students use hand gestures to convey meaning while talking about physics. Watch for it from your students! This work was done using the excellent program Algodoo, which is a bit like MS Paint with the physics engine of a video game -- and quite pedagogically useful (this website might help you get started).
There's a great mystery right now about some sort of mystery ailment that has affected staff at US and Canadian embassies in Cuba, and has now also been reported at a hotel just off the Malécon. Initially, the headaches, auditory oddities, and memory issues were believed to have been caused by some sort of sound weapon, but it just doesn't add up. There's lots of speculation, and that means lots of people thinking about the physics of what is going on!
One of the best pieces of physics over the past couple generations, I think, was the development and eventual testing of Bell's Theorem. It's subtle, and with very deep implications. I think MinutePhysics does a pretty decent job with it, in a new video.
And lastly, in case you missed it, Wilson, Wilson, and Low have an article in the Times Education Supplement that argues that a significant part of the gender gap in physics scores is because boys have more experience with projectile motion that girls. However, since girls who enroll in the "hyper-masculine environment" of an Australian military school exhibit the same gap, that experience cannot come from sports. Instead, they suggest, the extra projectile experience comes from childhood urination. I revere unorthodox explanations, but this one strains credulity.
- Danny