Introducing the Course, Staff, and NSF Project

Emily van Zee, Instructor; Henri Jansen, Chair of the Physics Department; Kirsten Clark; Nina Coleman, Kirby Erdman, Courteney Vogt, Peer Instructors

NSF project: Integrating Physics and Literacy Learning in a Course for Prospective Elementary and Middle School Teachers:
Introduce project, distribute and collect consent forms, place in envelope

Theme of Course: What happens when light from the Sun shines on the Earth?

Over the next two weeks we’ll be exploring the nature of light phenomena such as what happens when light shines on an object and makes shadows, how pinhole cameras work, how light reflects from smooth surfaces such as mirrors, what happens when light shines through water, and then we’ll put those phenomena together to think about what causes rainbows.
One thing that happens when light from the Sun shines on the Earth is that things get hot, so next we’ll explore the nature of thermal phenomena such as why some things feel hot or cold, how energy is conserved when you mix hot and cold water, and what happens when ice melts, liquid water warms, and then boils
We’ll also do a quick exploration of motion phenomena with motion detectors in preparation for Discovery Days, May 6, when we invite children visiting campus to play with light sensors, temperature probes, motion detectors and pinhole cameras, usually a totally chaotic experience but lots of fun.
Then we’ll consider the influence of light and thermal phenomena on local weather such as what causes sea breezes at the beach. We’ll also extend this to thinking about the influence of light and thermal phenomena on global climate change.
Throughout all these weeks we’ll also be watching the Sun and the Moon, to think about why the moon seems to have different shapes at different times and why many places on the Earth have seasons. We’ll also learn about some of the history of beliefs about the Earth’s place in the Universe, as discussed by Galileo, Newton and other scientists.
Finally we’ll return to playing with motion detectors to think about the nature of changing phenomena – where something is (its position), how fast that position is changing (its speed), and how fast that speed is changing (its acceleration) where the ‘it’ may be a car speeding up but also could be the speeding up of melting of glaciers all over the Earth.