Lee

Grading labs: A faster method using pre-printed return address labels.

May 18, 2012

Grading tends to be the biggest time consuming task for teachers. For those teachers who want students to complete lab write-ups that truly reflect discover and learning, providing feedback on labs can be an even more daunting task. This year I started using a system that has significantly sped up grading the mechanics of the [...]

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Newton's Laws and shopping carts falling out of truck

April 21, 2012

Watch the following video, the try to answer the questions below it: What is happening to the truck and the carts when the carts start following off the truck? What causes the carts to fall off the truck? While the truck is moving, the left row of carts doesn't fall off the truck. Can you [...]

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Modeling Instruction: Review of acceleration lab

March 15, 2012

I've been using Modeling Instruction in my physics class for the past five years, and keep wondering how to handle the problem of students who miss the whiteboard sessions (where students share their results and we reach class conclusions). These sessions are critical for student growth, as this is where they are challenged to look [...]

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Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol workshop at AAPT conference

February 5, 2012

At the AAPT Winter Conference, I attended a workshop on the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) (emphasis on "reformed teaching" not "reformed protocol"). Below are my notes on that workshop. [This workshop runs 8:00-5:00 on Sunday, and I'm live blogging this so, if you're reading during this time, reload the page for the most up-t0-date [...]

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The value of multi-modal trips

July 12, 2011

In transit lingo, "multi-modal" trips are those that use different modes to get to a destination. A common version is bike to bus/subway/rail, either taking the bike on the vehicle or locking it before one gets on. Today I had a wonderful trip that was multi-modal by accident. The "out" trip was planned as multi-modal: [...]

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Reflections on 900 miles on a bicycle

June 5, 2011

[I wrote this back in August of 2010] Well, I've been back for a week, so it seemed like time to write reflections on my Portland to Berkeley bicycle trip. Why? Why did I do it? Was it turning 50, the old "mid-life crisis" reaction? Maybe, but probably only a small amount. I'm pretty satisfied [...]

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"You can't put something on the final we haven't seen!!!"

December 7, 2010

Today as a finals review "warm up" (although it ended up taking the whole period) I presented the students with four beakers of water: One with ice, one at room temp, one on a hot plate "low" (about 37C) and one boiling. I used Logger Pro to show the four temperatures on a projector screen [...]

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Berkeley Student Food Collective now open

November 22, 2010

A new food cooperative opened on November 15 in Berkeley. The Berkeley Student Food Collective is open to anyone, student or not. Both members and non-members can shop, members receive a discount in exchange for work hours. I've shopped there a couple times, and the store is quite well stocked. It's just a small storefront, [...]

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Spreadsheet for calculating slopes at points on quadratic functions

October 17, 2010

On the Physics Modeling email list there has been a discussion of finding tangents to a parabolic curve using an Excel spreadsheet. The primary way we use this is when students graph position vs time of a ball rolling down a ramp. Students discover that the relationship can be modeled as a parabolic equation, x [...]

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Drive 55 MPH on Spare the Air days

October 14, 2010

With the batch of Spare the Air days in the San Francisco Bay Area in the last few weeks, I came up with an idea that would probably save a lot more gas than trying to get people to carpool and take transit (not that I'm suggesting we stop this, but I'm not sure how [...]

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