January
2007
Our
next meeting...
...is
at Northeastern Illinois University
6:30-8:30 P.M.
Click here for a map and directions. Meeting will be in the Science Building., Room 223, second floor.
Note the information about parking. Tags will be provided.
Park in the Level II Lots or the level II area in the garage (which is labeled "PF" on the map -- parking facility)
AND
EVENTS…
AT OUR LAST MEETING…
Elmhurst
College
Dave Lowry (Hillcrest High School) shared some work sheets he uses to help students understand the meaning of π, the circumference of a circle, and radian measure. These are very nice hands-on exercises using simple materials like lengths of wire.
Debby Lojkutz (Joliet West High School) is involved in QuarkNet (see http://ed.fnal.gov/uueo/documents/artifacts_0404/qn_grid.pdf)
She offered copies of their curriculum guide, as she had at the AAPT Chicago Section meeting
Before announcing the winner of this year’s Harald Jensen award, Ann gave us a capsule history of ISPP and the important role Harald, then at Lake Forest College, played in its foundation and for many years after. The winner is Matt Lowry of Lake Forest High School. At the request of Harald’s family, the award will be presented at the Lake Forest meeting on April 3. Congratulations, Matt!
This announcement concluded another outstanding Tri-Physics Meeting, truly “Tri” now that Physics West has been revived. (Their first meeting was scheduled for January 31.) Thanks to our Elmhurst College hosts.
Reported by John Milton. Several photos courtesy of Earl Zwicker.
|
WE
HAD A SNOW DAY!!
THE
MEETING IS NOW SET FOR
TUESDAY,
FEBRUARY 20
|
6:30-8:30 P.M.
Click here for a map and directions. Meeting will be in the Science Building., Room 223, second floor.
Note the information about parking. Tags will be provided.
Park in the Level II Lots or the level II area in the garage (which is labeled "PF" on the map -- parking facility)
| Feb 15 (R) | Physics Northwest, Glenbrook
South HS |
John Lewis |
| Feb 15 (R) | John Kallend www.iit.edu/~hsbridge | |
| Feb 20 (T) | PHYSICS WEST, Glenbard West HS | Bruce Medic |
| Mar 7 (W) | ISPP, |
Mel Sabella |
AT OUR LAST MEETING…
| Paul
Dolan (Northeastern Illinois University) showed us some very
small Styrofoam spheres in a plastic bag (Educational Innovations).
Some of these responded to his finger as if to a static charge. Several
questions were raised – were the spheres polarized or did they carry a
charge, was there a charge on the bag? They responded both to a
(charged?) plastic pen and to a metal screwdriver, even when it was
grounded. We did not arrive at a consensus about this. Paul then put a small radio controlled car on a “lazy Susan” and we expected to see the platform rotate opposite the direction of the car’s motion but the lazy Susan didn’t turn smoothly. One suggestion was to mount it on a hover puck. |
 |
 |
Joe Vetrone (Hinsdale
Central High School) brought up his version of the i-pod, a vintage
3-speed record player. He put some coins on a record and changed the
speed so we could observe the coins “fly off” at the appropriate
combinations of rotation speed and radius. Joe made small ramp with an
index card and some Lego blocks so that we could look at the effect of
having the rotating object on a rotating surface inclined to the
horizontal. Several people made suggestions for variations on this
setup and some described the effects they had observed on germination
of rotating seeds. Roy Coleman reminded us of the parabolic surface
produced in a rotating bowl of mercury and Ann Brandon said that
Vernier’s new wireless dynamics sensor could be used in this kind of
investigation. |
 |
| Scott
Beutlich (Crystal Lake South High School) spoke of Newton’s
fascination with alchemy and optics and then told us he modifies the
Newton and the falling apple story with other types of falling fruit,
ending with a third law pear that splits in two to reveal oppositely
directed vectors – forces come in “pears”. He then showed us pictures
from the Seattle AAPT meeting, including some taken at the Tacoma
Narrows Bridge, where a parallel companion bridge is under construction |
 |
| Stewart
Brekke (Chicago public Schools, retired) stacked some wood
blocks and proceeded to do an inertia demonstration, knocking out the
bottom block with a bat, then the next, etc., as he had first seen in
one of the Harvey White black and white films made in the 50s. Roy
Coleman suggested putting a plastic glass of water on top of the stack
to enhance the effect. Joe Liaw (Hinsdale Central High School) described some of the tools now available for video analysis. Joe uses Video Point to do motion analysis. He told us of a site at Doane College, http://physics.doane.edu/physicsvideolibrary/default.html, that has a large number of films available. Joe also showed some pictures of the large launcher he had constructed. Mark Tomko (Elmhurst College) showed us a variety of applications of a tablet PC, including the use of Microsoft Office One Note software. We saw some examples of how he incorporates pictures, movies and links into his lectures, which are made available to the students. He also showed us the use (and limitations) of the optical character recognition software that is included. |
 |
| Nate
Unterman (Glenbrook North High School) brought several metal
electrodes, a rectangular Pyrex dish and a 1-10 Volt dc power supply.
He uses to plot electric field patterns; potentials are measured with a
digital voltmeter and plotted on a grid. He showed us how he uses
Excel’s Plot Wizard to click and grab the plot to see it from different
perspectives. Neat! Then on a smaller scale, Nate showed us a Lego model he built of an atomic force microscope. The probe is moved over a tray containing an array of balls that represents the atoms of a sample. The beam from a laser pen in the probe is reflected off points on the surface under study and the position of the reflected beam on a wall-mounted grid is recorded. An Excel surface plot is formed and can be manipulated like the electric field plot described above. Nat gave us a detailed handout for constructing and using Lego atomic force and magnetic force microscopes, and instructions for making surface plots with Excel. |
 |
| Mark
Rowzee and Kevin Farrell
(Naperville North High School) did a quick demo of an Astro Blaster
(available from Arbor and other sources) that illustrates momentum
conservation. Their main attraction, however, was a pair of parallel
circular metal plates about 30 cm in diameter separated by insulating
spacers. This was connected to a Wimshurst generator. A conducting ping
pong ball was inserted between the plates and when the generator crank
was turned the ball oscillated between the plates as it charged and
discharged. A nice large scale demo. |
 |
 |
Bob
Froehlich (Plainfield North High School) mounted a laser level
on a variable speed drill. He pointed out that when the beam swept
across the wall near the drill its speed was much slower than when it
swept across the more distant opposite wall. This illustrates nicely
how linear speed depends on angular speed and radius of rotation. Then
Bob showed us why railroad wheels stay on track. His curved tilted
track was made of MBF fiberboard. A plastic rod could not stay on the
curve. But when he fitted it with two rubber stoppers with the smaller
diameter ends facing out they formed a stable wheel and axle
arrangement. |
 |
| J.
Chernes showed us how he measured the coefficient of friction
for water flowing though a length of plastic tubing. The downward path
of the water was from a bucket, through the tubing, to a horizontal
exit tube. The gravitational potential energy was obtained from the
height difference and the final kinetic energy was found from the exit
velocity of the water (obtained from its parabolic path). The
difference is the energy dissipated by friction. The friction force is
this energy divided by the length of the tubing and the normal force is
obtained from the pressure of the water against the side of the tubing.
This yielded, consistently, a coefficient of about .00035. (Sorry – no
first name or school – not on the sign-in sheet.) |
 |
Jan
Dudzik (Naperville Central High School) showed us a DVD about
the Conqueror of the Hill Competition sponsored by Lucent Technologies.
Her school will take part in this competition in the spring. Students
will design an energy transformation system that will send a vehicle
over a hill to recover some Wiffle balls. This is an especially
relevant activity for students in an engineering design class. For more
information contact http://www.lucent.com/wps/portal/Foundation/COH.
Allan Etzbach (Naperville Central High School, retired) has been working with Leon Lederman’s ARISE science curriculum project. Allan is compiling materials to be used in supplementary reading material. (To find out more go to http://ed.fnal.gov/arise/.)
Allan Etzbach (Naperville Central High School, retired) has been working with Leon Lederman’s ARISE science curriculum project. Allan is compiling materials to be used in supplementary reading material. (To find out more go to http://ed.fnal.gov/arise/.)
Larry
Alofs (retired) has been reading books by Bill Bryson. A Walk in the Woods is about the
Appalachian Trail. Larry told us of some items he read in Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything.
(1) A quote from this book: “To a first approximation, all species are
extinct.” (2) The relationship between the force applied by wind and
the square of the wind velocity. (3) The size of the moon relative to
the earth is unique in the solar system. The moon prevents the earth
from wobbling. (This sparked some good discussion.)
Dave Lowry (Hillcrest High School) shared some work sheets he uses to help students understand the meaning of π, the circumference of a circle, and radian measure. These are very nice hands-on exercises using simple materials like lengths of wire.
Debby Lojkutz (Joliet West High School) is involved in QuarkNet (see http://ed.fnal.gov/uueo/documents/artifacts_0404/qn_grid.pdf)
She offered copies of their curriculum guide, as she had at the AAPT Chicago Section meeting
| Ann
Brandon (Joliet West High School, retired) attended the AAPT
Winter Meeting. She recommended some of the AAPT publications she saw
there: Guidelines for High School Physics Programs and Physics First
(pamphlet, also available on-line), She encouraged high school teachers
to enter the Physics Bowl competition – more information is on the AAPT
website. She encouraged non-members to take advantage of AAPT’s
free six month trial membership (http://www.aapt.org/). Ann bought a set of LED Christmas tree lights like those Eileen Wild showed us in December (Walgreens, $1.25). Ann viewed them through grating glasses that produce a bright first order pattern. And she had a small, very bright 3 LED light source (2/$5 at Walgreens). |
 |
Before announcing the winner of this year’s Harald Jensen award, Ann gave us a capsule history of ISPP and the important role Harald, then at Lake Forest College, played in its foundation and for many years after. The winner is Matt Lowry of Lake Forest High School. At the request of Harald’s family, the award will be presented at the Lake Forest meeting on April 3. Congratulations, Matt!
This announcement concluded another outstanding Tri-Physics Meeting, truly “Tri” now that Physics West has been revived. (Their first meeting was scheduled for January 31.) Thanks to our Elmhurst College hosts.
| BP is promoting its “A+ for
Energy Program in Greater Chicago,” open to all pre-K to high school
teachers in the area. If this has not been passed on to you, go to www.aplusforenergy.com
<file:///\\www.aplusforenergy.com> |
Reported by John Milton. Several photos courtesy of Earl Zwicker.
|
WHEN YOU PARK AT NEIU, YOU WILL NEED TO PICK UP A PARKING TAG . GET A TAG IN THE MEETING ROOM AND RETURN TO YOUR CAR TO HANG THE TAG FROM THE REAR VIEW MIRROR. |
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To
get to
Northeastern Illinois University From the expressway: Coming from the northwest or from the south on the Kennedy, exit at either Kimball or Pulaski going north, and follow that to Bryn Mawr Avenue. From Kimble turn west. From Pulaski turn east. Coming from the north on the Edens exit at Peterson & take that to Pulaski, turn south on Pulaski to Bryn Mawr (just after the nature center).Turn east onto Bryn Mawr. Park in the Level II lots or the level II area in the garage (which is labeled "PF" on the map -- parking facility) Return to the top. |
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