June 30, 2021 Death Valley geology hiking/camping trip Dec 2021 Explore Death Valley with a group of hikers interested in examining the geology of the park. The trip is December 28, 2021 through January 1, 2022. Categories Geology/earthquakes/Science hikes Comments: 20
May 27, 2021 Fuel savings calculator for driving 55 on highways When my school returned to in-person teaching in May, I started a short daily commute with about 13 miles on a highway with no traffic slow-downs (teaching has its advantages: early start means before most commuters). I started recording the fuel efficiency (miles per gallon) during the highway drive each day. We have a Ford C-max Energi plugin hybrid, which... Categories Environment Comments: 0
May 13, 2021 Lava Beds & Tule Lake geology hiking/camping trip; July 2021 Lava Beds & Tule Lake: July 11-14 Continuing our July northeast California trips, we will spend four days exploring Lava Beds National Monument, plus the Tule Lake National Monument. Katie and I are leading another hiking/camping trip with our Meetup group. If you would like to attend, space is limited so be sure to RSVP on Meetup here. The trip... Categories California History/Geology/earthquakes/Science hikes Comments: 0
May 12, 2021 Mt. Lassen and Lava Beds geology hiking/camping trip; July 2021 Three-day geology focused hiking in the Mt. Lassen area in Northern California. Nights spent in a group campsite. Categories California History/Geology/earthquakes/Healthy living/Science hikes Comments: 0
November 12, 2020 Cardstock paper bridge competition In my physics classes at Menlo-Atherton High School, we used a homemade bridge breaker to test the strength of student bridges. Students created bridges out of manila folder paper and hot glue. Maximum height are provided, and the distance between the two landing is specified, but in the end the winners are the groups that can create the best load-to-mass... Categories Physics Comments: 0
September 1, 2020 More videos for buggy lab from home This page contains links to 14 videos of buggies moving next to a tape measure. A stopwatch is mounted on each buggy, so students can collect position and time data as the car moves. Categories Physics/Science Education Comment: 1
August 3, 2020 Videos for buggy lab from home With COVID-19 requiring many of us to do remote teaching this fall, I wanted to provide videos that students could use at home. I shot these videos with a cell phone gimbal to stabilize the video. Categories Physics Comments: 3
May 8, 2020 Bicycle touring on the West Coast of USA The Pacific Coast Bike Route I’m not sure when the first official bike route was created for the Pacific Coast, but it was well known when I first rode it in 1977. Resources Adventure Cycling Association “Pacific Coast” breaks the Vancouver BC to Imperial Beach in San Diego down into five maps. Vicky Spring and Tom Kirkendall co-authored Bicycling the... Categories Bicycles/Healthy living/Travels Comments: 0
April 15, 2020 Death Valley online tour: COVID-19 social distancing Using Google Earth as the tour map, and combining my knowledge from the trips I have taken there with my photos and YouTube/Vimeo videos, I organized an online tour for of Death Valley April 15th, 2020. Below are images and videos from that tour (I hope to add a Google Earth link soon). Categories Geology/earthquakes/Science Education/Science hikes Comments: 0
April 6, 2020 Zoom + Whiteboard = almost in the classroom As we move forward with online learning due to the COVID-19, I’m offering Zoom-based office hours. There are high-tech ways of sharing screens, etc, but I decided to use a low-tech solution to share drawings with my students. Categories Computers and the web/Education and schools/Science Education Comments: 0