Final Meeting Program
(with abstracts or Dr. Phil's quick observations)
Morning Session
Meeting call to order and opening comments - Alex Azima, Lansing Community College,
MIAAPT president.
Welcome - John Tanis, Chair, Department of Physics, Western Michigan
University.
Contemporary Physics Research and Teaching - Jan Tobochnik, Kalamazoo
College. Editor, American Journal of Physics; Divisional Associate Editor,
Physical Review Letters.
This talk will discuss the need to incorporate more contemporary
research into physics courses at all levels. I will discuss some ideas
on how to do this, and give an example from my own research on granular
materials.
Development and assessment of inquiry-based activities in an
interdisciplinary science course for non-science majors - Bradley S.
Ambrose, Grand Valley State University.
At Grand Valley State University, the Honors Program has begun
offering an interdisciplinary science course, "The Human Body
in Motion," that satisfies the general education requirement for
non-science majors in the program. As a member of the faculty team
that designed the course and delivered it for the first time in Fall
2001, I had the opportunity to adapt existing research-based curricular
materials for use with the intended (and unique) student population.
In this talk I will describe how the materials were modified to work
within the constraints of the course. I will also report on their
effectiveness in enhancing both student conceptual understanding and
student appreciation of science as inquiry.
A Capstone Course for Pre-service Elementary Teachers - Paul Zitzewitz and
Gail Luera, University of Michigan-Dearborn.
We have designed and taught a course to be required of all
pre-service K-8 teachers that has two goals--understanding of a
"big idea" like energy across all the sciences and
learning to conduct classroom or action research. Content and
results of the first two offerings will be discussed.
A Magnetic Levitation Demonstration You Can Understand - David A. Van Baak,
Calvin College.
Earnshaw's Theorem seems to forbid stable levitation of an
object by static magnetic fields, but the surprising features of
diamagnetic materials allow an easy demonstration of levitation
that is fully static but fully stable. This talk will display
the diamagnetic properties that make this demonstration possible,
and also model the magnetic sources that make the levitation stable.
There will also be information about sources for materials required.
Some sources of the powerful magnets that David used in his demonstrations.
http://www.scitoys.com
Up Periscope! - An application of plane mirrors - Dale Freeland, Portage
Public Schools.
In the study of reflection of light, students come up with a simple
set of steps for determing where the image is located when a flat mirror is
utilized. This simple two mirror periscope challenge is presented to
students after they know object-image relationships using a plane mirror.
Students apply their knowledge to solve this challenging problem.
FEATURED SPEAKER: Communicating Science with the Arts - Chris Chiaverina,
President of AAPT.
You have to love a keynote speaker who has only one request for
special equipment: a power drill. Not only does that promise a
"dynamic" talk, but Chris suggested that he didn't want to
have to try to carry a power drill onto the Amtrak train from Chicago.
Chris Chiaverina took us on a tour of activities and demonstrations
of physics and perception. Visualizing destructive interference from
two speakers in a room by letting the students move around with one ear
covered until they find an anti-node. Making interesting color art
pictures with multiple layers of birefringent packing tape and polarized
light. Moire patterns. 3-D information in 2-D pictures by light and
shadows. Anamorphosis in art images.
Oh, and the power drill? He had an attachment that held three chemlume
tubes -- one red, one green and one blue. Snapping the tubes to start
the chemical luminescent reaction and spinning drill... makes white.
Attaching strips of black tape to each of the tubes at a different radius
produced different colored bands (magenta, cyan and yellow).
The American Physical Society's Forum on Education has a Web version of Chris' talk.
http://www.aps.org/units/fed/spring2002/chris.html
This is Chris' Web site at New Trier High School in the northern Chicago suburbs.
http://nths.newtrier.k12.il.us/academics/math/Connections/connections.htm
Several of Chris' illustrations can be viewed at Illusion Works.
(This site was down during the meeting.)
http://www.illusionworks.com
Afternoon Session
Business Meeting
Discussion of Dues, Registration costs and Recruitment
Future Meeting Dates
Fall 2002 Meeting - Saturday October 26th - A Meeting at Mackinac Island
(suggested at the Fall 2001 Meeting) was deemed too expensive.
Currently looking at holding the Fall 2002 meeting at Garland Resort.
Spring 2003 Meeting - Saturday April 12th at Henry Ford Community College
Election of 2nd Vice-President from the two-year colleges
Michael Lopesto, Henry Ford Community College
Distinguished Service Award
Paul Holoman (?)
Quickies
Clarence Bennent showed some lead bells he made. At room temperature
the bells make little noise. Cool them with liquid nitrogen and they will
ring. He will be casting more lead bells at the Summer 2002 National AAPT
Meeting in Boise. The four bells he brought were awarded to our guest keynote
speaker, service awardee, host institution (WMU) and our outgoing president
(Alex Azima).
Stump the Professor
Al Rosenthal posed two questions in E&M, asking how the energy can be
accounted for.
Afternoon Talks
The PhysTec Project - Al Rosenthal, Western Michigan University.
Fall 2002 will see the start of a five-year experiment in WMU's Physics Dept.
in coming up with a different way to teach the undergraduate physics classes
that, among other, our physics teaching majors take. Motivated by the failure
rate of many students to get through these core courses and
Mirrors: Conceptual Approaches, Basic Principles and Student Thinking -
David Schuster, Western Michigan University, Physics Department and Institute
for Science Education.
xxx
Final Fantasy: Mom, I Wanna Grow Up And Be A Physicist - Philip Kaldon,
Western Michigan University.
Cinema in 2001 broke some new ground in computer animation, with
Shrek, Monsters, Inc., and especially Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.
All three of these movies made extensive use of physics and physics
modeling. The most impressive of these may have been the hyperrealistic
Final Fantasy movie. A similar increase in the use of physics and
physics modeling has arrived in video gaming, with PC's and
PlayStation 2's having computer and graphics horsepower once reserved
for "supercomputers". Perhaps this can be another way to get students
interested in physics -- you can't design (or understand) video games
or animation without understanding some physics.
Note: Since the business meeting agenda was much longer than originally
scheduled, two talks in the afternoon session were postponed to another
meeting.