Using Google Docs for Labs

I have a couple of labs that I have flipped the data collection process for, and done more of the analysis in class. There are advantages and disadvantages here:

Advantages:

• Less time taken in class for data collection, more time for data analysis
• Everyone gets to make the measurement, instead of some students sitting on the sidelines
• More data possible, as we can bin the data sets for big group analysis

It's this last one that has the most impact on whether I do the data collection like this or not; if we need a lot of data, it's boring and cumbersome for each group to do it and not as easy to share as it should be within the classroom.

Some disadvantages:

• The collection process has to be simple and cookbook enough for students to be able to do it independently, with essentially no equipment (simulations and videos are good)
• There's not any tinkering with the setup or designing the experiment
• It's not appropriate for introducing a completely new paradigm - not at all
• Students can't/don't easily ask questions, so you can get some junk data if you're not careful with the design and instructions

With those caveats, there are some cases in which I've found it quite useful:

Experiment 1: Period Measurement Techniques

Students did the experiment here.

The goal was to look at the effects of different measurement techniques on the period value - not just the mean, but the width of the distribution. I use this to introduce the concept of distribution width, too.

I put columns into the Google spreadsheet to calculate the period for each method and then paste the data into Excel, where I graph the normal distribution derived from each data set and graph them on common axes:

There's not much choice about this one - you need a big data set, and this is the easiest way to collect and analyze it that I've come up with.

This requires some manual cutting/pasting, etc., but the next one's nice and automatic:

Experiment 2: Resonance

I'm doing this one during the upcoming unit; I haven't done it before, but I think that it's relatively foolproof.

Students did the experiment here, which uses an applet dealing with the amplitude of a driven string. We're getting at the idea that a system will respond with a big amplitude only when it's driven at or near one of its natural frequencies (the frequencies of the allowable standing waves, in this case). This is a great intro to musical instruments: the buzzing of a mouthpiece or reed isn't really producing a single pitch, but a wide spectrum of noise, of which only the instrument's natural frequencies resonate and are heard.

This one is much cleaner with the data analysis. I used Python and GoogleCL to download the Google doc data, sort it, and graph it automatically.

The code looks like this:

And the output looks like this (fake data that I used to test it):

I do these infrequently (about once per term), but it can be a big help. I also wouldn't do them in any sort of context that required big paradigm-building, etc. They're straightforward cases where I need a lot of data, where that data can be collected over the internet or at home, and where the experiment's straightforward enough and involves an established setup or concept that I can trust them to give me accurate data.

Sharing Whiteboards

What to do with student whiteboards? Pick a great one and share it with the school! Here's a display case that I had Operations build to show off whiteboards outside my room:

Some Capstones

A few capstones from the AP class in the first term. I wasn't super-happy with the management of these - not enough revision and discussion - but there were certainly some good ones in there. Here's a smattering of the final reports. Some include VPython programs which are pretty neat, too.

• A capstone where a student writes a VPython program to prove that the freefall time for any tunnel through the Earth (along a chord) is the same
• A capstone where a student write s a VPython program to verify the time for the freefall through the center of the Earth (comparing to the solution for the SHM diff. eq.)
• A capstone where a student calculates the through-the-Earth times for different planets/objects (that was a popular topic this year)
• A capstone where a student analyzes a clip from Toy Story, where the slinky dog dives down, changes mass, and spring back up
• A capstone where a student builds a tricord instrument, predicts the correct mass to tune the string to a chord, and tests the predictions

There were several others, and this is just a selection. There were also lots of cool ideas that fell by the wayside for expediency, which is something that I'd like to avoid happening in the future. Some cool ideas about programming a simulation of the view of the Venus transit from Earth (I couldn't quite get this one to work myself, but it was an awesome idea), simulating the Home Alone bucket swing and crash (this one's totally doable), and a few other really neat ideas unfortunately were lost along the way. Oh, well - two more tries left this year. Lots more good ones to come, I'm sure!

Homework Worth Doing

I posted a few weeks ago about motivating kids to do homework by making it worth doing. That's a pretty heavy gauntlet to throw down, and I did have at least one Twitter response calling me on that. I don't claim to always have the right answer to this, but there are a few things that can take us in the direction of kid-obvious worth, I think:

• The most obvious kind is practice. This is an easy type of HW to give, but the tricky part is making kids see that they need it. Assessments should be framed as an opportunity for the students to find out what they need to work on - as formative, rather than summative, and HW is then the second step in a lot of cases. This is a difficult thing to do, and it requires a lot of frank talking with students in class, particularly at the beginning. I get better at selling this every year, but you'll never have every kid on board. Those kids that you can't ever get probably weren't getting much out of "completing" mandatory HW anyway.
• Deeper applications of concepts that you already know can work, but they can be difficult to pull off. Because of their nature, lots of kids are going to miss a subtle concept in there, and you'll have a few successful solutions waiting around for everyone to catch up in class. Depending on the kids and the culture, you may have a large percentage shut down and come in with something blank. It takes good scaffolding for these, and I'd use them sparingly - this is exactly the sort of thing that class is good for.
• Simulations or calculations can take some of the time-consuming, but not super-difficult bits of lab work outside of class. If kids are following up on a collision lab by calculating the center of mass velocity or change in kinetic energy for each system, that's something pretty easy for them to do, and they won't mind doing it (because it's not mentally taxing), but it'll save you class time. If they're at the point where they're pretty comfortable modeling, you can give them a simulation and have them model the relationship. I do this with universal gravitation (since we can't do the experiment in class anyway) and sometimes with circular motion, depending on how I'm feeling about experimental setup. At this point in the year (early second trimester), they're mostly ready to do that - certainly the design, data-taking, and graphical modeling, and most can do the algebraic modeling as well. We can then wrap up the relationship together and have a good discussion when they're 'fresh,' rather than after they've spent an hour taking data and running fits, etc.
• Another useful kind is new explorations. If they're framed well and have a low barrier to entry, they can be really productive. The first one where some kids obviously didn't do it should bring some helpful peer pressure as well. If you have one where nearly everybody doesn't do it and there's a frustrating day, that's a good candid conversation to have with them (and to remind them of the next time).

In this last vein, I have an example, using this gravity simulator (I just got sidetracked for 10 minutes playing with it while finding the link):

This is basically a way to get the conversation started on elliptical orbits, while reviewing a bit about circular orbits and Newton's laws. The kids come in with all sorts of observations and ideas, and it is a great springboard into the topic. If you do this in class, you end up having to curtail their investigation in the hopes of getting the discussion started, which isn't super fun for anybody. 

Not every assignment worth doing looks like this, but it's a way to start to think about meaningful HW outside of class that isn't practice on old topics.