TAPT,
We had a
fantastic and sort of nostalgic meeting last week – actually now that I look at
the date it’s been two weeks. Erik Herman, former Tucsonan and founder of the
Physics Factory bus, visited from Ithaca NY. He has been working as outreach
coordinator for Cornell University, but is planning to go fulltime as an
informal science educator. He was here to help Bruce Bayly and friends to
outfit the newest Physics Bus, which seems to be bus #7. Also attending was
Damien, a student who works on the bus.
The bus is
small and sweet - it's the size of one of those smaller school buses that would
hold about 30 students. It was purchased by funds donated by Barbara Bickel,
and she was at the meeting to see the it. Bruce is planning to have undergrads
drive, so the smaller size is best for that. But it had a lot of cool stuff on
it: lots of wave and sound demos. One cool demo/experiment used neon bulbs in a
microwave to measure the approximate wavelength of the microwaves. The bulbs
are available on eBay – mine came this week. According to Al Vanuga, you can
also use a compact fluorescent bulb if you put the metal part in water.
Erik’s bus in
Ithaca runs on solar power. US Battery has donated some great batteries to make
that possible, and they want to donate more.
One
interesting discussion was about a Freakonomics podcast about supply and
demand. There is a huge supply of education, but less demand. Especially
science education, where there are a lot of people writing curriculum etc.
Bruce and Erik see the bus as a way to increase demand for science education.
At the
meeting, Fritz showed us two magazines, but I unfortunately only wrote down
one: PRISM magazine, which had an article he liked on bees, and only one about
cameras run by a Raspberry Pi. There was also a book: She Has Her Mother’s
Laugh, by Zimmer. This is a history of the concept of heredity; it’s much
more complex than we think. There is also some discussion of eugenics, which
was/is bad. Fritz highly recommends this book. Also, one of Fritz’s friends
invented the modem.
In a previous
meeting, we also discussed Deep Learninbg Revolution by Terrence
Sejnowski. The takeaway is that people are bad at learning rules but good at
spotting patterns. There was some discussion of thinking in the diffuse mode,
which kind of uses the whole brain. Also, Helen pointed out that research shows
that we are good at physics because we know physics. In other words, there’s
not really a way to improve critical thinking without a subject matter
application. I have actually been motivating my classes by using this line –
you can do well at physics by learning physics.
Some dates
for future meetings:
Jim Housley
will be in town for our next meeting, which is set for February 9th.
Jim is planning to bring a suitcase full of equipment – if you have requests,
send them to Jim at jmhousley@aol.com.
Yep, he still has an aol address. In addition, I’d like to have a dinner for
Jim and Karen that evening. Please put it on your calendar.
On March 2nd,
the Arizona chapter of the AAPT will be meeting in Tucson at the Air and Space
Museum. It should be great. I hope many from Tucson will attend – the main idea
of moving the meeting to different regions of the state is to make it
convenient for everyone at least occasionally.
Our April
meeting is a bit up in the air, but will likely be April 13th
at Pima Community College, as JD is not available on that day.
Our end of
the year party will be May 18th, also subject to adjustment.
Hope to see
you all in February. Let me know if you have questions/comments/suggestions.
Best,
Karie
