Mentos geyser slo-mo: the bottle

Tuning forks at 1200 fps

More fun with the Casio EX-F1. This time we're slowing down a tuning fork. It's a 125-Hz tuning fork, and the camera was set to capture at 1200 frames per second.

Click the images to access the QuickTime clips. Enjoy!

Wizard exposed and fired from Florida schools

Hats off to the principal of Rushe Middle School in the doomed state of Florida. A practioner of the Black Arts was given access to schoolchildren, disguised as a substitute teacher.

The wizard conjured the aid of the spirits by performing the "disappearing toothpick" trick in front of the innocents!

The principal caught wind of this Dark Magic and had the wizard fired.

Sleep soundly, Floridians. Your middle school principals are on the job, exposing and firing wizards, and I presume warlocks and witches working in the schools. Your children are safe.

/sarcasm

Thanks to the Bad Astronomer for blogcasting this news gem.

Spring showers of new music

My iTunes overfloweth. It starts with new music from Asia (yes, that "Heat of the Moment" Asia). Phoenix is just the third album from the four original members. And it's a nice update to their 1982 form. Much better than I thought it would be.

It continues with My Someday, the long-awaited full-length album from Blondfire (formerly Astaire). The Brazillian-midwestern, brother-sister duo got under my skin three years when I saw them open for Ivy at Slim's in San Francisco. Only after buying their EP at the show did I learn they were from my hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

And there are new albums from my ancestral homeland of Scotland. The Proclaimers (yes, those "I Would Walk 500 Miles" Proclaimers) have crafted a new set of winning tracks replete with catchy hooks and brotherly harmonies. Life With You is their best work since 2001's Persevere. And celtic supergroup, Capercaillie has delivered a well-produced, groove-intensive disc: Roses and Tears. Karen Matheson's voice never gets old.

But the flood continues with the overdue release of The Weepies' Hideaway. This folk-duo's voices were made to go together, and their guitar work is dreamy. Despite their band name, the new album debuted at #31 on Billboard and was #4 in digital downloads.

Then that NPR scoundrel, Scott Simon, has to go interview one Marié Digby on the release of her debut, Unfold. Apparently she's some sort of "controversial" phenomenon on YouTube. Whatever. But her music was captivating. I went to her corner of the iTunes Music Store and couldn't keep my ears off her.

Tonight I'll see the Cowboy Junkies up in Chico. Monday it's Asia in San Francisco. The week after next it's The Proclaimers and Crowded House in San Francisco. Talk about trying to catch the deluge in a paper cup!

Andy Fraknoi to speak on "Fiction Science" May 16

Thanks to Dan Burns for this heads-up!

The Center for Inquiry, San Francisco presents:

"The White House Astrologer, the Roswell UFO, the "Face" on Mars, and a Young Universe: A Skeptical Look at Fiction Science"

a nontechnical talk by astronomer Andrew Fraknoi

Friday 16 May 2008

World Affairs Council Auditorium
312 Sutter St., 2nd Floor, San Francisco

Doors open at 6:00 pm; Presentation starts at 6:30 pm

Thanks to the popular media, an enormous amount of attention has been given to some pretty amazing claims on the fringes of astronomy. These include the idea that your life path and romantic destiny are determined by the position of objects in the sky at the moment of your birth; that extraterrestrial space-craft have regularly landed on our planet (and kidnapped innocent citizens without being noticed); that an ancient race left us a message on the planet Mars in the shape of a human face; and that the entire cosmos is less than 10,000 years old.

In this illustrated talk, astronomer and popular lecturer Andrew Fraknoi will discuss the most famous "fiction science" claims related to astronomy, and provide the background and analysis needed to appreciate them properly. He will unveil some recent detective work about these cases, and show how there is often a lot LESS to them than initially meets the eye. And he will demonstrate how a few skeptical questions and a bit of careful investigation can often help bring these extra-ordinary cosmic claims down to Earth.

Andrew Fraknoi is the Chair of the Astronomy Department at Foothill College and Senior Educator at the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. He served as the Society's Executive Director for 14 years, and has organized over 20 national workshops on teaching astronomy. Fraknoi is the lead author of "Voyages Through the Universe," which has become one of the leading astronomy textbooks in the country and recently wrote a book for children, "Disney's Wonderful World of Space." He appears regularly on local and national radio explaining scientific developments in everyday language. In 2007, he was selected as the California Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Endowment for Higher Education and won the Gemant Prize of the American Institute of Physics for a lifetime of contributions to combining physics and culture. The International Astronomical Union has named asteroid 4859 Asteroid Fraknoi in recognition of his contributions to the public understanding of astronomy.

$10 General Admission

Free to 'Friends of the Center for Inquiry'

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For more information, contact: Michael D Adkisson, Coordinator, Center For Inquiry | San Francisco

2215R Market St #418
San Francisco CA 94114
415.335.4618
www.centerforinquiry.net/sf

ON (old news): The new Nismo

There was a dearth of posts in March (and most of April). I'll try to catch up with some ON posts.

In late February, I replaced my trusty PhyzVan (1999 Toyota Sienna) with a truck. The Sienna had served me well over the years. And meticulously maintained for its first 150,000 miles, it had a very full life in front of it. I felt bad about trading it in so young.

But my needs changed over the years. My interest in landscape photography takes me to areas where the roads aren't fit for passenger vehicles. On recurring visits to the desert southwest, I could only look longingly at roads that stabbed deep into the red rock canyons.

I intended to get a 4x4 Toyota Tacoma with the requisite off-road package. But I felt an obligation to check out the other top-rated truck in this class: the Nissan Frontier. Thorough research and test-drives led me to decide in favor of the Nissan. The Tacoma is built for people smaller than me. And most people are smaller than me, so no worries for their business plan. The Frontier was more comfortable and was more tech-friendly.

The Frontier's 4x4 off-road package is called "Nismo." I suppose I could replace my "Phyz" plate with a "Phyzmo" plate at some point in the future.

The purchasing process left something to be desired, but at least it cured my of any desire to do business with Folsom Lake Nissan. Other than taking a $500 deposit and failing to come up with the promised vehicle (and stalling for days) and losing the key I gave them to test drive the Sienna, they were great. In fairness, they did give me the best deal: lowest price on the Nismo and highest value on the trade-in. I guess the dealer's way out of a deal that goes too well for the customer is to not deliver the car and walk away from the deal. They did offer to charge me an additional $100 to sell me the truck in a color I didn't want.

Hard to imagine why I didn't close the deal with them.

More importantly, I did get the vehicle (in the color of my choice) elsewhere. In time to roll it around town for a few weeks before motoring off for a 3000mi road trip in Utah with my buddy, Rick. The Nismo performed flawlessly on that trip. But that's a topic for another ON post. In the meantime, there's my Nismo posing near Utah's Fisher Towers.

The day I burned my school down

The most poignant moment of whole the affair was when the alarm sounded and the lights flashed, and everyone in my classroom laughed because they knew why.

We're in the midst of our unit on light. We talk about why we can't see a laser beam between the laser and the dot of light it puts on a distant wall. Then I modify the air in the room so we can see the beam. In the old days, physics teachers used chalk dust as a scattering agent. But chalkboards have been relegated to museums. There was a time when certain physics teachers used cigarette smoke. But smoking was long-ago banned from school sites.

What's a physics teacher to do? Several years ago, I came across "professional haze"/"fog in a can" in the Arbor Science catalog. It was a wee bit pricey, and you needed to use quite a bit of it to get the desired effect, but it worked. So for the past several years, that's how we turned my classroom into a laser light show. Eight bright, green laser beams sweeping through a darkened room with "visible air" is a memorable scene.

Unbeknownst to me, a recent fire safety review of the school resulted in some changes on campus. The sensitivity of the smoke detectors was apparently increased. Significantly.

So as soon as I started fogging the room with my professional haze, blammo: klaxons and flashing xenon strobes! School wide. The students broke out in laughter and I had to follow along before sending them to join the rest of the student body out for the fire drill.

I thought I might make it through my entire career without causing a fire drill. I was wrong. Back in 1986--before my 22nd birthday--I actually had an unplanned fire in my classroom, but no detector detected and no alarm sounded. I was about three weeks into the profession (new school, new town, new state, first job) when a lighting ballast burst into flames. I knew where my nearest fire alarm was and I quickly pulled it. Nothing. The fire burned itself out, but it was startling to my very young self.

So many years later, when I set the alarm off unintentionally, all I could do was laugh.

AAPT PhysicsBowl answers are up!

Find the very robust PDF answer key here. It will make much more sense if you participated in the 2008 PhysicsBowl competition exam and have the questions for these answers.

Results of the PhysicsBowl competition will be posted May 9.

And the winner is...

The San Juan Unified School District Physics Adoption Committee met for the last time and rendered its decisions on the textbooks to be used for the next six or seven years.

Physics and Honors Physics. The wisdom in some aspects of San Juan's adoption process is quite finite. Case in point: the title adopted for Physics must also be used for Honors Physics. Every bit as counter-intuitive as many classic physics demonstrations. But we settled on the 2009 edition of Paul Hewitt's Conceptual Physics. I of course could not speak on behalf of this title. But I didn't need to. The book spoke for itself. The new edition has a dynamic range and flexibility that surprises teachers who give it a thorough evaluation.

One school dissented and would prefer to adopt Holt's Physics text. I hope the district will have the wisdom to allow them to.

Advanced Placement Physics. We went with Serway and Vuille's Essentials of College Physics. It's a slimmed down version of the classic College Physics by Serway and Faughn that retains that title's chapter sequence. But the book is attractively thin and light, shedding some of the applications, depth, and end-of-chapter questions of College Physics. For high-schoolers in AP Physics, the Essentials book is deep enough.

Some details remain: the selection of some supplemental workbooks and wading through all the ancillaries. But the adoption decisions are in. And both titles are the ones I would have chosen for my own program, so I'm happy with the outcome.

For more info on either textbook, click their cover.

NCNAAPT Brentwood pix (and another videoclip)

Pictures from the NCNAAPT Spring Meeting at Brentwood's Heritage High School can be found here. For meeting details, see the program.

I also took a quick high speed videoclip of a bouncing water balloon with the very groovy Casio EX-F1.

NCNAAPT Spring Meeting afterlinks

The NCNAAPT Spring Meeting at Brentwood's new Heritage High (Go Patriots!) had more good talks than throngs of attendees. The new school is stunning--more of a community college than a high school!

We happy few physics teachers in attendance had a great time and saw the latest grooviness from Pasco and Vernier. But NorCal physics teachers need to think about what we want from these meetings lest they stop happening.

My wee talk concerned the contents of my Skepticism in the Classroom page and the motivations that led me to create it. The page features quick, ready-to-use lessons in critical thinking that can be dropped into your curriculum throughout the year.

If you're interested in skepticism/critical thinking, I strongly recommend attending The Amaz!ng Meeting (TAM) in Las Vegas. TAM is a four-day conference focusing on science, pseudoscience, psychics, magic, debunking, and related topics, and is sponsored by the James Randi Educational Foundation. This year's TAM6 will include Neil deGrasse Tyson, Mythbuster Adam Savage, "B.S." hosts Penn & Teller, Bad Astronomer Phil Plait, and many, many more.

I attended TAM2 in 2004 and haven't missed one since. It's hard to describe how good this conference is. But once you've been to one, you'll know. TAM6 is June 19-22 at The Flamingo. You get a special rate at The Flamingo if you book reservations by May 16.

I also showed a few clips from the new Casio EX-F1 digital camera. It's a still camera capable of recording high-speed video at 300, 600, and even 1200 frames per second.

Check out the complete water balloon execution video. It's a BIG QuickTime file; please be patient.