April 16, 2018Solving ‘roller coaster’ energy problemsTutorial walking students through solving energy problems involving roller coasters. Categories Physics Comments: 0
February 20, 2018Swords to Plowshares at the national weapons labs: Late 70’s/early 80’s1979: “Shaping Alternatives at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory: A Preliminary Analysis.” Categories Berkeley politics/Environment/Peace/Politics Comments: 0
October 21, 2017Beach cleanup daily — without leaving your homeCollecting trash around your house helps keep your neighborhood clean, and keeps trash out of our waterways. Categories Environment/General Comments: 0
August 31, 2017Back to School Night – Menlo-Atherton HS, 2017OK, maybe I’m in the minority, but I really like Back to School Nights. Categories Education and schools/Modeling/Physics/Science Education Comments: 0
March 17, 2017How I generate science tutorial videosA tutorial on creating videos for science education (or any other instructional theme). Categories Computers and the web/Science Education Comments: 0
February 26, 2017Videos of building molecules, and showing chemical reactions, with candy and toothpicksThis post includes a couple of videos to provide students with examples of how to solve a couple of tasks in chemistry. One is “building chloromethane” and the other is “Ester synthesis from acetic acid and ethanol.” Categories Chemistry/Science Education Comments: 0
January 26, 2017Modeling Instruction and NGSS: Energy as a Crosscutting ConceptNotes from a talk on Modeling Instruction and energy as a Crosscutting Concept. Categories Chemistry/Modeling/Physics/Science Education Comments: 0
January 19, 2017Extra time on quizzes: Why you need individual workToday was a great day. My students had a short quiz, and I wanted to make sure they all had plenty of time to complete it. I thought it would take them about 20 minutes to finish it (most finished in 15-20 minutes), but wanted to allow plenty of time for students who require ‘extra time’ (whether LD diagnosed and... Categories Education and schools/Science Education Comments: 0
December 2, 2016The periodic spiral of the elementsVideo of a periodic table rotating to show that the periodic table is not flat; that the Alkali metals are next to the Noble gasses. Categories Chemistry Comments: 0
November 22, 2016Excel spreadsheet for calculating molar masses and percent compositionOver a decade ago I made a Quatro-Pro spreadsheet to make quick calculations from masses on the periodic table. Well, now Excel rules the roost, so I created a similar version using Excel. The fundamental element of the spreadsheet is that the cell with each mass is given a name that is the symbol for the element. So, for example,... Categories Chemistry/Computers and the web/Science Education Comments: 2
