Neverending updates and upgrades at phyz.org

I am back to being the sole proprietor of physics at Rio Americano. That hasn't been the case since 1995. But biology was up--way up--and physics was down.

The division of labor involved in producing Book of Phyz handouts for students is now undivided and reunited, all on my plate. I can get the district to do most of the printing by sending them PDF-based print orders. (That time spent learning PDFs in 1999-2000 is paying off.)

I always want to print the latest versions of all my curriculum materials. So I need to create PDFs of all my updated documents. The upside is that I can then post them to The Book of Phyz resource at phyz.org. As of this weekend, the whole of the Physics 1 first semester is online.

I'm also upgrading the PowerPoints. Of course, I don't use PowerPoint. My posted presentations are actually interactive QuickTime movies rendered by Apple's Keynote. When I started using Keynote, I went with a resolution of 800x600. Seemed hi-res at the time. Keynote scales when sending presos to the projector. So there was never a problem for me showing my presos in class.

But the rendered QTs did not fare so well. The looked jaggy. So when I can, I'm changing the resolution of the presos to 1650x1050 and re-rendering the QTs. They weigh in with many more megabytes, but they look much, much better. I'm trying to tag the upgraded presos as "HD."

And I just posted a new, Zen-like preso to accompany the Clever Dumbbell demonstration. No words past the title page! If you do the demo on a regular basis, you'll figure out how to leverage the preso. I also posted a simple preso to accompany the Cannonball demo.

Significant figures, error, and "proofiness"

Professional scientists and engineers have to be skilled in the handling of error and the tracking of significant figures. High school students are not professional scientists or engineers. While I don't exclude any discussion of these issues in my course, neither do I dwell on them. We spend a day on them, and revisit them as needed.


I heard an interesting story on NPR's Weekend All Things Considered that made me think of how significant figures and error work their way into "everyday life." The piece is an interview with Charles Seife, whose latest book, Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception will arrive on bookshelves this week.

Amazon's description of the book:

"Proofiness," as Charles Seife explains in this eye-opening book, is the art of using pure mathematics for impure ends, and he reminds readers that bad mathematics has a dark side. It is used to bring down beloved government officials and to appoint undeserving ones (both Democratic and Republican), to convict the innocent and acquit the guilty, to ruin our economy, and to fix the outcomes of future elections. This penetrating look at the intersection of math and society will appeal to readers of Freakonomics and the books of Malcolm Gladwell."

Listen to the NPR piece here. If you're not familiar with the story of the 65,000,038 year-old dinosaur, you shouldn't miss it.

The brief time spent on these matters in not for naught. Too much time on them pushes out actual physics out of the school year.

Galileo was wrong? Oh I don't think so...

We've been exploring inertia in the physics class lately. We've been through some of my favorite demonstrations and will do a lab on Monday. We also watched the Mechanical Universe episode on Inertia, which includes the story of how Galileo used the concept of inertia to "set the world spinning." Spinning away from geocentrism and toward heliocentrism.

Recall that in the early 1600s, the rest of the Enlightened world was growing to accept the idea that Earth was but a planet circling the larger, grander Sun. Galileo was hoping to move Italy in that direction, despite its Church-enforced geocentric predilections. He imagined that his personal connection to the Pope might help him get away with it. And he was wrong.

But according to one Dr. Robert Sungenis, Galileo was wrong about heliocentrism, too.

Sungenis and his followers are modern-day geocentrists! Oxymorons? Perhaps. But they are scheduling a conference to share their beliefs. It's November 6 in South Bend, Indiana (near Notre Dame, they hasten to add).

Galileo was wrong and The Church was right, they claim. Science teachers, our work is never done.

The "Teach the Controversy" spoof T-shirts might sell well there. I hope actual scientists (especially well-spoken astronomers) attend. I'd pay for Phil Plait's registration out of my own pocket to get him there.

Thanks to Michael Shermer for spotting the conference.

Who knew lightning could be so annoying?

I'm somewhat torn here.

On one hand, it's a very kinetic presentation. Sight, sound, and motion. Nearly all of it could have been done in Keynote. (Do I need to add that nearly all of it couldn't be done in PowerPoint?) So yes, it's very flashy. And it beats traditional content-delivery presentations by a mile.

But for my tastes, it's too much. Too much information (mostly trivial), too fast. Too many wind-whoosh sounds to emphasize how quickly the information is whipping by.

Maybe I'm missing the point. Maybe this series is all about a big clusterdump of trivia presented as infotainment. If that's what it's trying to do, it does it well.

See for yourself.

OK, now let's get at the errors.
1. The "90% of people who are struck survive" line is terrible. The stat may be true, but the vast majority of those survivors suffer permanent, debilitating injuries.
2. With so many stock photos of cars, why did they have to choose a ragtop Cadillac? A convertible may not be so safe if struck by lightning. Better to have metal over your head. Canvas makes a lousy Faraday cage.

You CAN take the sky from me

A few years ago, I took a stubborn (er, "principled") stand against CompUSA. I wanted to buy a simple item from them, but the clerk would not complete the transaction unless I supplied personal information. Legal tender was insufficient. I bid her "good day" and walked out of CompUSA for my very last time. I purchased the same item across the street at Best Buy. I gave them money; they gave me the item. So old-fashioned.

Months later, CompUSA declared bankruptcy.

Tonight I tried to buy air at Target. A simple can of compressed air to clean the filter in the LCD projector I use at school. "I need to swipe your ID," the clerk demanded. "Why?" I asked. "Kids get high on the compressed air." "And you can see I'm not a kid; but here, here's my driver's license." I flashed her the ID. "No, I need to swipe it." "If you can't see than I'm not a kid looking to get high, I'm afraid I won't be able to do business with you. So why don't you go ahead and keep all these items?" I had some other stuff to buy, but nothing was such a crisis that I needed it at that moment.

I'm not a fan of surrendering more than money in exchange for goods at stores. I have no idea what they do or don't do with swiped driver's license data. But I do hear about identity thefts involving crooks who abscond with hard drives/data collected by merchants.

The merchants always apologize profusely for letting someone steal your personal information. But there are never legal/monetary consequences for them. So they don't feel compelled to protect the data as best they could.

If I decide to stay away from Target, I'm pretty sure they'll be OK without me. And if I can't buy air anywhere else without an ident card swipe, I'll be back to Target in no time. Otherwise, I simply can't do business with a merchant as paranoid as they are are stupid: a dumb nannystore.

A quick local news story on the swipe. Warning: it's a local news story...

But my immediate concern? How am I gonna get my buzz on without a can of air?

Volgograd: the new Tacoma Narrows

If you're not signed up for Arbor Scientific's CoolStuff newsletter, you might have missed this.

The newly-opened Volgograd Bridge in southern Russia is experiencing a "resonance malfunction."



This is 70 years after the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge fell. Like Obi-Wan Kenobi, though, the demise of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge made it more powerful than anyone could have possibly imagined. Its oscillations of doom revolutionized bridge design and made it the most famous bridge in physics lore.



Russian authorities closed the bridge amid the resonant rippling, but reopened it days later following a safety inspection.

Still though, if you feel you were cheated by time out of a thrill ride on "Galloping Gertie," you might want to book travel to Russia. And you might want to do it soon. The original Tacoma Narrows Bridge carried traffic for four months.

STAR 2010 scores are up!

The 2010 STAR scores are now live. The high-flying Physics CST scores continue to climb.

Here's the statewide skinny:
72,766 students took the 2010 Physics CST
21% performed at the Advanced level
28% were Proficient
33% were Basic
11% were Below Basic
8% were Far Below Basic

The percent of Advanced and Proficient scores stands at 49%, up from last year's pack-leading 46%. The number of physics students earning Advanced or Proficient status has increased by 20% since 2003. No other subject-area test has seen anything close that kind of performance gain. Here's an obligatory Excel graph to show the story of the stats.

(click image to embiggen)

Congratulations, California physics teachers!

STAR 2010 results should be up soon

Keep a browser tab refreshed at the Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) website. I'll post an update when the 2010 results are up.

Time to ditch those "Scientific Method" posters

I never liked those Scientific Method posters. Or the equivalent lists that occupied Chapter One of so many science textbooks. They seemed too sterile and prescribed, and made science seem like a very clean business carried out by automatons.

So my pulse raced on my first viewing of The Mechanical Universe episode devoted to The Millikan Experiment. The narrative trashes the so-called scientific method. I thought that was fairly bold for a program devoted to science. The Mechanical Universe story laid out the fact that scientists are biased when they enter the lab. They usually know what they're looking for. And so on. It went on to describe how science succeeds despite scientists.

While working on my Master's degree, I found out that the "scientific method" as outlined in posters and schoolbooks was the creation of an education academician. No wonder I didn't care for it!

Carl Sagan suggested we need a Baloney Detection Kit when evaluating scientific claims. Michael Shermer describes, in detail, what such a kit might include. Here it is in video form.



I think a poster form of this Baloney Detection Kit would be a better use of precious science classroom real estate than those tired Scientific Method posters. Even better: a bulletin board where examples of pseudoscience can be added, organized by their most obvious baloney flags. Just a thought.

Circumhorizontal arc at Angel's Landing

My brother, his wife, and I were hiking the strenuous and perilous Angel's Landing trail in Zion National Park earlier this week.

Physics lessons abound in work (elevation gain is 1500 ft), friction (footing), tension (chains), equilibrium (precarious balance), etc. But after returning from Angel's Landing to Scout Lookout, my brother directed my attention to a spectrum in the cirrus clouds above.

I had never seen such a color band in the sky. It was clearly the interaction of sunlight and cirrus cloud ice crystals. But it was at a much greater angle from the sun than the oft-seen 22° halo. The colors were spread wider and were more deeply saturated.

Upon returning to the connected world (which is a small world, indeed, when you're at the mercy of AT&T), I googled "cirrus cloud rainbow" and discovered that what we were seeing was a circumhorizontal arc (CHA).

A circumhorizontal arc lies 46° from the sun and is observed only when and where the sun is more than 58° above the horizon. We get more of them in the States than they do in Europe.

The heart of CHA optics is the hexagonal ice crystal. For CHA, we need plates rather than rods. Sunlight enters a vertical side (rectangular) face and exits the bottom (hexagonal) face.

Of course, the different colors in the sunlight are refracted by different amounts. The dispersion of colors is fairly wide in CHA.

For more images of this atmospheric grooviness, you can check out this filtered gallery, or image-search "circumhorizntal arc." (Remember that an image-search will give you many results that are incorrectly tagged.) My favorite CHA image is the "fire rainbow" photograph taken near the Idaho/Washington border some years ago. It caused enough of a stir to get its own Snopes article!

My travel shots and landscapes from the trip are here.