Extreme weather, Journals, and Recombined Light
During this year's potent hurricane season, there was discussion about whether extreme weather events can be attributed to global warming. For the first time a top-tier journal has published peer-reviewed papers showing that three specific weather events can be directly attributed to global warming. Specifically, the authors claim that anthropogenic climate change is the cause of record temperatures in Asia, in the north Pacific, and globally in 2016.
The American Journal of Physics has announced that they're going to stop publishing physics education research [PER] papers. Cleverly, though, they encourage authors to submit education-related papers that are targeted toward a broader audience (including teachers), which may encourage PER researchers to think more about the impacts and implementations of their findings.
Dalmeet Singh Chawla has a great summary in Physics Today of the current state of accessing journal articles. It's certainly worth a read, even if you've been keeping up. If you're curious about Sci-Hub, be careful about imitation websites: currently, you can access it directly via http://80.82.77.83/.
Minkin and Sikes have a nice lab, where they roll a ball on a concave track and seek the coefficient of rolling friction. It could be a good independent investigation. One would need to include the rotational kinetic energy for a proper analysis, as in the paper. The graph alone gives me lots to think about (below):
Cross and Lindsey report on an investigation into the hockey slapshot. To hit a slapshot, you strike the ice with your stick a few cm behind the puck, then drag the stick forward, using friction to bend the stick back, before releasing that elastic energy when you strike the puck, giving it extra momentum. This is another good one for students, especially if you have an iPhone or a Casio Exilim camera that can do slow-motion video.
If you pass a beam of white light through one prism, you get a rainbow. If you then pass that light through a second, inverted, prism, the rainbow is recombined into a beam of white light... right? Actually, no. Garcia-Molina, del Mazo, and Velasco explain why not in a very nice paper in The Physics Teacher. The brilliant image below is from their paper.
If you're interested in making Youtube-style science videos, a paper describing the Phys FilmMakers project at UCL might be of interest. There's a lot of insight here, both into scientific filmmaking, and on running a program to teach this to students. Laura McKemmish, one of the originators, has some examples on her website.
There's a paper in PNAS that looked at colloquium speakers at top universities across several disciplines and found a gender disparity, even in fields with balanced representation. They suggest that colloquium organizers act as "gender gatekeepers". Given the importance of colloquium invitations in academic life, I wonder if representational balance is something that we should start requesting.
From the web...
Mark Rober has a good video about fluidized air beds (this has been popular lately!).
Brian Frank shared an insightful theory of teaching.
We saw this video about the weight distribution on a trailer (I think this is the original).
Frank Noschese's students made stations for a friction lab.
While Kelly O'Shea does stations for the exam.
Cole Accardi posted this useful slow-motion video of a cart explosion.
And next time someone sends me a video of Lewin doing the pendulum-face-smash demo, I'm going to respond with Dan Burns's much better version.
Finally: many students don't know that paid summer research programs exist. Please talk with your undergrads, and encourage them to pursue these opportunities. In the USA, a directory of Research Experiences for Undergraduates programs is maintained by the NSF. There's also the American Association of Physicists in Medicine. In Canada, NSERC hosts the Undergraduate Student Research Awards. CERN's Summer Student Program is open to students from CERN member-states, as well as many other nations, but doesn't have a stipend. I will continue to link such programs when I find out about them.
May the phys be with you!
The American Journal of Physics has announced that they're going to stop publishing physics education research [PER] papers. Cleverly, though, they encourage authors to submit education-related papers that are targeted toward a broader audience (including teachers), which may encourage PER researchers to think more about the impacts and implementations of their findings.
Dalmeet Singh Chawla has a great summary in Physics Today of the current state of accessing journal articles. It's certainly worth a read, even if you've been keeping up. If you're curious about Sci-Hub, be careful about imitation websites: currently, you can access it directly via http://80.82.77.83/.
Minkin and Sikes have a nice lab, where they roll a ball on a concave track and seek the coefficient of rolling friction. It could be a good independent investigation. One would need to include the rotational kinetic energy for a proper analysis, as in the paper. The graph alone gives me lots to think about (below):
If you pass a beam of white light through one prism, you get a rainbow. If you then pass that light through a second, inverted, prism, the rainbow is recombined into a beam of white light... right? Actually, no. Garcia-Molina, del Mazo, and Velasco explain why not in a very nice paper in The Physics Teacher. The brilliant image below is from their paper.
If you're interested in making Youtube-style science videos, a paper describing the Phys FilmMakers project at UCL might be of interest. There's a lot of insight here, both into scientific filmmaking, and on running a program to teach this to students. Laura McKemmish, one of the originators, has some examples on her website.
There's a paper in PNAS that looked at colloquium speakers at top universities across several disciplines and found a gender disparity, even in fields with balanced representation. They suggest that colloquium organizers act as "gender gatekeepers". Given the importance of colloquium invitations in academic life, I wonder if representational balance is something that we should start requesting.
From the web...
Mark Rober has a good video about fluidized air beds (this has been popular lately!).
Brian Frank shared an insightful theory of teaching.
We saw this video about the weight distribution on a trailer (I think this is the original).
Frank Noschese's students made stations for a friction lab.
While Kelly O'Shea does stations for the exam.
Cole Accardi posted this useful slow-motion video of a cart explosion.
And next time someone sends me a video of Lewin doing the pendulum-face-smash demo, I'm going to respond with Dan Burns's much better version.
Finally: many students don't know that paid summer research programs exist. Please talk with your undergrads, and encourage them to pursue these opportunities. In the USA, a directory of Research Experiences for Undergraduates programs is maintained by the NSF. There's also the American Association of Physicists in Medicine. In Canada, NSERC hosts the Undergraduate Student Research Awards. CERN's Summer Student Program is open to students from CERN member-states, as well as many other nations, but doesn't have a stipend. I will continue to link such programs when I find out about them.
May the phys be with you!