Meetings for Michigan Science Teachers

There are a few meetings for Michigan Science Teachers coming up in the next month or two. For the most part, whenever I mention these they will focus on SE Michigan (since that's where I live).

Detroit Metropolitan Area Physics Teachers. The DMAPT is a good group of teachers who meet 4-8 times a school year. We typically meet in the evening (start at 6ish) on a weekday. Cost to the teacher is cost for dinner(unless you're not eating), usually pizza and salad. We share teaching tips, lab, and demos with each other. Many people share lessons and many just watch and learn.

We always welcome new members and when Cal remembers we charge $5 dues/year. We had our first meeting at Royal Oak High School on September 16th. If you're interested in attending future meetings just let me know.

Metro-Detroit Science Teachers Association - This is coming up fast. It's on Saturday October 18th and will be held at Lawrence Technological University. This is a great conference even though it's small. The Michigan Earth Science Teachers always have lots of good stuff for sale cheap as well.

Michigan Chapter of the American Association of Physics Teachers - Another meeting coming up fast. It's on October 11th and will be at Port Huron Community College. This one is only $10!

I'll be at the MDSTA, but I don't think I'm going to make it to the MiAAPT. It's the same weekend as my school's open house.

Audacity, good for more than just Recording Audio

Today in Physics we are doing the "Constant Velocity" Lab. Students are given windup toys and are tasked with determining whether they are moving at a constant velocity. The method is fairly straight forward. Put the windup toy on a piece of paper and make a mark to show its position every second. Students then graph the data on their graphing calculators and find the equation of their best fit line.

In-order to get our 1 second intervals I set up a click track in Audacity. Just select "Click Track" from the "Generate" menu. Then set it to 60 beats/minute with 10 beat measures. It doesn't really matter how many measures, but if you have lots you might crash the program. I usually just create 6 measures (1 minute) and the hold the Shift key down when I hit play so it will loop continuously.

The LHC is Live and So Are We!!!

The Large Hadron Collider was switched on today and the world didn't end. Today, I'm planning on deviating from my normally scheduled lesson plan in physics to talk about it. I'll start by showing the LHC in Google Earth in-order to give my students a sense for where it is and how big it is.

I also plan on sharing the LHC Rap as my general introduction to what it is and what it is intended to be used for.