Welcome...

July 13, 2010

...to my blog. I write about science education, radical/liberal politics, accessible web design, web support for small "brick and mortar" businesses, and a little about my life. Since I write about such a broad spectrum of topics, you may want to click the category link (on the right) of the topic you are most interested [...]

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End of the year teacher evaluation for my physics students to complete

August 10, 2010

At the end of each school year, I have my students complete an evaluation of the course. My goal is for them to reflect (1) me, (2) the class, and (3) themselves. I find the evaluations extremely valuable. Scary at times, but valuable. This last year wasn't one of my best, and the evaluations showed [...]

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Using a TI-83 or TI-84 graphing calculator in high school physics classes

July 15, 2010

This summer I'm leading a workshop at the American Association of Physics Teachers meeting entitled "Using graphing calculators in the classroom." Featured in the workshop is my handout titled "Analyzing data using your TI-83 or TI-84 calculator." You can download a PDF version of the worksheet here. The handout has calculator screenshots and uses TI [...]

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AAPT meeting in Portland and my bike trip home

July 15, 2010

I'm leaving today for the American Association of Physics Teachers summer meeting in Portland, Oregon. I'll be presenting a workshop at the meeting (see next post), then riding my bicycle to Eugene then down the coast back to Berkeley. You can follow my cycling exploits here: www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/?o=RrzKj&doc_id=7183&v=V

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New Grade Machine support email group

June 29, 2010

Grade Machine's creator, Misty City, closed and sold the program to Pearson, who then stopped work on and support for the program. So it's up to the users of Grade Machine to help each other out. A new Google group is designed for peer-to-peer support for this wonderful grading program. You can find and join [...]

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Error analysis in volume measurements

June 9, 2010

I use the attached worksheet to walk my high school physics students through the process of determining the percent error in a calculated measurement. After these calculations, students then determine the range of their final results (± x cm3). Finally, they look at the range and discover that use of the "sig figs" rules gives [...]

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Grade Machine operating system checks

April 19, 2010

Since Grade Machine is no longer supported, we may start moving into operating systems (e.g. Windows XP, Mac OSX) that Grade Machine will no longer run under. Please add a comment to this post if you have installed Grade Machine on your operating system, and if you have been successful or not. This will help [...]

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Blogging my SF-San Luis Obispo bike trip on crazyguyonabike.com

April 3, 2010

I'm riding a six-day bicycle tour from San Francisco (well, Daly City BART, actually) to San Luis Obispo. I found a great web site for posting bike trips, CrazyGuyOnABike.com/leetramp. You can follow my trip there. I'm riding a great touring bike, the Surly "Long Haul Trucker." The bike is not light, but it's sturdy I'm [...]

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Snow on Claremont Avenue in Oakland/Berkeley hills

December 7, 2009
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Hayward's "D Street" fault creep, curb offset evidence erased

December 7, 2009

Sadly, improvements in city streets can wipe out geologic evidence. D Street has been a great field trip stop to see earthquake fault creep, and appears in many guidebooks and web sites. But in 1997, Hayward repaved the road, including the sidewalks (they all needed it). When they repaved it, they straightened all the curb [...]

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