End of Year Party

TAPT will celebrate the end of the school year Saturday, May 26th, at J.D. Garcia's house, [use contact form to request address]. We'll meet at 5:30 pm for burgers and end-of-the-year conversation. Bring a demo you used this year if you have one, or anything else you'd like to share.

Please bring a dish to share, and maybe a drink if you like something special. We'll have burgers and all the fixins, plus some soft drinks. Families and guests are welcome!

Hope to see you all there. A quick note to me to let me know about how many burgers (beef, chicken or veggie) your group might consume would be appreciated.

Saturday!

Best,

Karie

Meeting this Saturday

TAPT-ers,

We meet this Saturday, April 14th, at J.D. Garcia's house at 9:00 am for potluck breakfast and a talk. Our original speaker had to cancel, but we have another great speaker: Professor Tom Bever from the departments of Linguistics, Psychology and Neurosciences, maybe more. He will be talking about his research, of which he says: 

 "I have some results on how the combination of natural law and the visual system leads to the preference for the golden mean, AND how they also lead to a prediction about depth perception, which we have confirmed.

It combines some discussion of Art as well as relation to language structure."

Please join us at J.D.'s for what will be a very enlightening talk with, I'm sure, much conversation.

See you there!

--Karie

Last Meeting's Notes and Upcoming AzAAPT

TAPT,

I haven't been too successful in selling AzAAPT meetings to the Tucson crowd, but they are always interesting. There are some great physics teachers in Phoenix and surrounding areas, and I always learn a lot. My husband and I are driving up Friday night, and could take a rider. I copied Jim Ward's email below, so take a look, I think it will be a good meeting, and you can see Lowell Observatory as a side trip. I spent many nights there in my youth.

TAPT meets the following Saturday, April 14th. We have a speaker, thanks to J.D. Her name is Dr. Elena Plante, and she will be talking about language and learning. I'll have more information soon. 

Our meeting last Saturday (March 24) was great - Fritz knows so much! We talked about the book Learn Better, and I did distribute Fritz's notes for your perusal. Some of the highlights:

• How people learn to do math on an abacus is different than on paper, and apparently better. Something about a physical connection association with the processes. One Irish philosopher thinks the hand is part of the mind.
• Fritz thinks there is something missing in the theory of cognition, something that has to do with energy - energy is part of learning and gestures are part of that.
• A positive attitude toward math makes people do better at math. Maybe that's what good parents provide.
• Steve Jobs trained himself not to give feedback - he didn't even blink!
• Good decisions take energy. Parole board clemency decreases right before lunch.
• If students get in the habit of working, they use less energy to make themselves do it and have more left over for cognition
• Poverty is noisy.

At our April meeting, I think we should have a discussion about Pam Tautz's "flashy thing", that piece of equipment that makes a motion map on students' phones. Pam, can you bring some cost estimates?

Thanks as usual to all who attended. 

Hope to see you one of the next two Saturdays!

Best,

Karie

Last Meeting's Notes

TAPT-ers,

Just a quick re-cap of our meeting last week. Many thanks to Jim Housley for a great program and for bringing a lot of great stuff. Most equipment was snapped up. I have a few things if you would like them – a density set, and a dial indicator with an attached bracket and metal bar for set-up.

Among the demos Jim showed:

·      A float and chain engineering set – I hadn’t seen this before and they were all snapped up, so I’m not sure what all was included. It’s an engineering apparatus that asks students to develop different measuring devices – it’s super cool.

·      The dial indicators that we’ve seen before. Jim had a great idea for a lab – do a Hooke’s law experiment with the unit of mass being one student mass. The dial indicator can be on the floor, then one student at a time move to the indicator. As more students get close, the indicator shows more floor depression, and that can be turned into a displacement of the spring inside to graph an F vs x line whose slope is the spring constant.  We tried it on J.D.’s floor using teacher mass as the independent variable, but his floor is just too solid. Jim says it works well on any floor except the ground floor. The dial indicator can measure depressions or changes of 1/1000 of an inch.

·      A UV filter kit: one lens filters UV, one doesn’t. Everything looks the same until you have something that is fluorescing – best used outside. This has lots of potential in chemistry and physics. Jim had some UV beads that fluoresce in the sun.

·      Some beads that Jim bought at the bead show. These were beautiful. They look sky blue when the light source is off to the side, and reddish-yellow when you look through them at a light source. Just like the atmosphere. Jim surmised that there are small particles embedded in the plastic that scatter light.

Our next meeting is March 17^th. J.D. is working on a speaker. Also, in April (our tentative date is April 14^th) we are discussing the book Learn Better, by Ulrich Boser. I have several more copies of the book, thanks to Fritz Fisher. Let me know if you need one, I can send it through the mail. I will bring them to our March meeting too. I’ll also bring extra equipment from Jim.

Hope to see you all soon.

Best,

Karie

More on This Saturday

Hi Tucson Physics Teachers,

Here's our plan for Saturday, February 3rd. We are meeting at J.D. Garcia's house, [use Contact form for address], in the morning at 9:00 am - notice the slightly later time. We will have breakfast potluck and our guest is Jim Housley, teacher emeritus and physics lab equipment manufacturer. We will aim to end at 11:00.

I've invited everyone for dinner at my house in the evening at 5:00. I tried to send a google invite, but it didn't work as well as I'd hoped. If you are planning to come, or tentatively planning to come, it would be helpful if you would shoot me another email. I guess I have to figure out that calendar thing for next time. At any rate, you are welcome to bring a guest, we will eat and socialize with the Housleys. My address is [use Contact form for address and directions].

And please feel free to come even if you forget to RSVP. 

Hope to see you at either or both events!

Best, 

Karie

Meeting this Saturday

TAPT,

We will meet Saturday at 9:00 at J.D. Garcia's house. Our guest is Jim Housley from Alaska - do you wonder why he likes to come to Tucson? We will have the usual potluck breakfast, so bring a dish to share if you can.

Jim is bringing some good stuff to show us, and much of it will be available for your classroom. 

In addition, I'd like to invite everyone to my house Saturday night for some more social time with Jim and his wife Karen. Chris and I will be cooking, or at least serving food -  it may or may not be homemade. Please join us at 5-ish for dinner and conversation with Jim and Karen. I'll send an invite through my Google calendar. Families or guests welcome.

Hope to see you Saturday!

Best,

Karie

James Housley On the Way!

TAPT-ers,

Sorry, I neglected to send this over the weekend, I temporarily lost it in my mountains of email.

From Jim:

Here is a list of items that I have in some degree of surplus, and available to bring

Float and chain engineering problem solving set:  ability to make one each of a thermometer, a hydrometer, a barometer, and a milligram balance, and to modify them to vary their sensitivity and/or range.  This was discontinued from PASCO's catalog a few years ago in a housekeeping purge, but perhaps someone has an old pasco catalog and could see details.  This was my response to need for STEM before STEM became a thing.

Mirrors 150 mm sq, with a base that holds them normal to a table top. Lots of uses besides the obvious.

Density sets of 12 pieces of aluminum, all different sizes.  Graphing mass vs volume gives a straight line graph, whose slope is the density of aluminum.

UV color shifting beads, white but become colored under uv, including the uv in sunlight. Then return to white after a delay. also transparent disks that appear identical, but some block uv, while some transmit it.  results can be seen using the beads.

thick plastic material that has amazing thermal expansion in hot or cold tap water.  disks, and pieces that have holes that are a near fit for the disks.  like the classic brass ball and ring apparatus, but no bunsen burner is needed.

Small vacuum pump and bell jar, a few sets.

Singing rods, that can can be stroked to make a longitudinal oscillation with loud sound.

A small number (3?) to donate of the dial indicatiors that I showed once before that Karie mentioned in her e-mail.  They show how it is that a seemingly immovable floor or wall can exert a force.  I will try to bring some ancillary parts to make all this ready to do this demo.

No guarantees as to quantities I can bring, but I will bring the largest item of luggage allowable on the plane, and will try to respond to requests.  NOTE NOTE NOTE I will seal up the box or large suitcase Tuesday night (1/23) so any requests after will likely have to wait an extra year.

James Housley

Transparent Devices LLC

Physical Address:

2375 Jordan Ave.

Unit 5 Shop

Juneau, Ak  99801

US Mail Address:

PO 32777

Juneau, Ak   99803

(907)586-8909 phone

(907) 586-8908 Fax