Center-of-Mass, Privilege, and Telescopes
The Washington Post has a beautiful story about Zephyrus Todd, a trans boy who was once a posterchild of the maker movement.
There's been quite a bit of news in astronomy this past week. The VIRGO gravitational radiation detector was recently brought online, and has now reported its first observation of a black hole merger. Alongside the two LIGO detectors, we can now do a much better job triangulating the origins of these mergers, and future discoveries.
Meanwhile, efforts to resume work on the Thirty-Meter Telescope on Mauna Kea may go forward, after a building permit was issued, in a 5-2 decision by the Hawaiian board of land and natural resources. The astronomers are desperate to build the next-generation telescope in the northern hemisphere's best location, but have been unable to persuade local activists for whom the mountain is sacred. Meanwhile, the James Webb Space Telescope has seen its launch delayed to 2019 after slower-than-expected integration and testing.
Center-of-mass dynamics are pivotal to our field, but often difficult for students to grasp. In a paper in The Physics Teacher this week, Kaar, Pollack, Lerner, and Engels [paywall] present a new unit in the modeling format. I saw their talk at the AAPT summer meeting, and was impressed at how much thought had gone into this. Complete resources and videos are available online.
Scherr and Robertson suggest in The Physics Teacher about we should adopt a privilege-based approach to our field. It's an important read, with some significant and difficult implications for how we teach.
After protests in American sports leagues over the past two weeks, I've seen the #ScientistsTakeAKnee hashtag around the web. It's a nice show of solidarity but, as Chanda Prescod-Weinstein writes, real change will require combatting racism more actively, and Caleph B. Wilson suggests ways that non-POC can help.
Veritasium has another beautiful video, this one about Schlieren imaging of fluid flows.
I really liked this great video of a practical in which students had to get a toy car to jump through a ring of fire (but, new teachers, talk with your principal before you do stuff like this!).
Lastly, keep your ears open for the Nobel prize announcements this week. Physics Today has a five part retrospective, including this article and this one. I've heard speculation about the LIGO consortium, chaos theory, or carbon nanotubes being recognized this year, but none of the names I've heard floated have been women: it's been 54 years since Maria Goeppert Mayer won.
There's been quite a bit of news in astronomy this past week. The VIRGO gravitational radiation detector was recently brought online, and has now reported its first observation of a black hole merger. Alongside the two LIGO detectors, we can now do a much better job triangulating the origins of these mergers, and future discoveries.
Meanwhile, efforts to resume work on the Thirty-Meter Telescope on Mauna Kea may go forward, after a building permit was issued, in a 5-2 decision by the Hawaiian board of land and natural resources. The astronomers are desperate to build the next-generation telescope in the northern hemisphere's best location, but have been unable to persuade local activists for whom the mountain is sacred. Meanwhile, the James Webb Space Telescope has seen its launch delayed to 2019 after slower-than-expected integration and testing.
Center-of-mass dynamics are pivotal to our field, but often difficult for students to grasp. In a paper in The Physics Teacher this week, Kaar, Pollack, Lerner, and Engels [paywall] present a new unit in the modeling format. I saw their talk at the AAPT summer meeting, and was impressed at how much thought had gone into this. Complete resources and videos are available online.
Scherr and Robertson suggest in The Physics Teacher about we should adopt a privilege-based approach to our field. It's an important read, with some significant and difficult implications for how we teach.
After protests in American sports leagues over the past two weeks, I've seen the #ScientistsTakeAKnee hashtag around the web. It's a nice show of solidarity but, as Chanda Prescod-Weinstein writes, real change will require combatting racism more actively, and Caleph B. Wilson suggests ways that non-POC can help.
Veritasium has another beautiful video, this one about Schlieren imaging of fluid flows.
I really liked this great video of a practical in which students had to get a toy car to jump through a ring of fire (but, new teachers, talk with your principal before you do stuff like this!).
Lastly, keep your ears open for the Nobel prize announcements this week. Physics Today has a five part retrospective, including this article and this one. I've heard speculation about the LIGO consortium, chaos theory, or carbon nanotubes being recognized this year, but none of the names I've heard floated have been women: it's been 54 years since Maria Goeppert Mayer won.