http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/ 2020-01-27T01:24:00-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/ http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/lib/images/favicon.ico text/html 2013-04-05T11:34:56-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:cfairhockey?rev=1365186896 Navigate back to the activity. Comments by Mary Bridget Kustusch (post-doc and co-instructor Winter 2012) This year, we didn't do this as a small group activity, but as a large class discussion. After demonstrating the motion, David McIntyre asked what the potential energy graph would look like. Several students suggested things and David asked a different student to draw what they said on the board. text/html 2013-05-14T13:31:51-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:cfballoon?rev=1368563511 Navigate back to the activity. Comments by Mary Bridget Kustusch (post-doc, teaching "Central Forces" Winter 2013): I used the wrap-up as a way of extending the ideas that these students had seen in earlier courses related to the Kinesthetic Visualization of Complex Numbers. I had a group of students represent several points along the equator for different spherical harmonics. I also used this to highlight the importance of periodic boundary conditions by having them wrap around into a rin… text/html 2013-04-11T16:03:55-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:cfconics?rev=1365721435 Navigate back to the activity. Comments by Mary Bridget Kustusch (post-doc and instructor Winter 2013) The handout did not ask how $\delta$ impacts the orbit, so we didn't spend much time on that this year, but I have added it into the handout, as well as a question that encourages students to reflect on what they have learned through the activity. text/html 2011-07-14T15:53:42-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:cfhydrogenvis?rev=1310684022 Navigate back to the activity. Kerry Browne: The following maple worksheet [hydrogenvis_demo.mw] is intended to be used by the instructor for demonstration purposes. Three functions are defined in this worksheet that allow you: Kerry Browne: The following Maple worksheet [hydrogenvis_array.mw] is intended to be used by the instructor for demonstration purposes. It utilizes the functions defined in [hydrogenvis_demo.mw] to generate an array displaying a selection of hydrogen atom orbitals. text/html 2012-08-09T18:26:34-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:cforbits?rev=1344561994 Navigate back to the activity. Kerry Browne: Questions sometimes arise about how satellites change from one orbit to another. The following worksheet, [cforbits_changing.mw], based on [cforbits.mw] can be used to explore the process of changing orbits by applying tangential thrust. This worksheet may be particularly useful for discussion of the NASA homework problem. text/html 2013-04-25T17:24:56-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:cfqmring?rev=1366935896 Navigate back to the activity. Comments by Mary Bridget Kustusch (post-doc, teaching "Central Forces" Winter 2013): Another way of visualizing the time dependence is through a Kinesthetic Visualization of Complex Numbers and it would be a nice addition to this sequence of helping students to wrestle with issues related to complex numbers, as well as time dependence. text/html 2011-07-14T15:53:42-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:cfqmringgroup?rev=1310684022 Navigate back to the activity. Kerry Browne: This activity provides an excellent opportunity to review the postulates of quantum mechanics and how quantum calculations are made in the wavefunction representation. The first few times students do these calculations with wavefunctions, it is easy for them to use algorithmic/rote methods. It may be very useful to encourage students to refer back to the Postulates of Quantum Mechanics that they learned in the spin 1/2 case and use the tools they hav… text/html 2013-04-25T17:22:27-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:cfqmringgroup2?rev=1366935747 Navigate back to the activity. Comments by Mary Bridget Kustusch (post-doc, teaching "Central Forces" Winter 2013): We did not do this activity in class in 2013. Instead, I chose to do Superposition States for a Particle Confined to a Ring in class so that I could really emphasize series expansions. However, the worksheet was counted as extra credit and RingTimeDep was given as a homework problem. text/html 2013-04-25T17:20:19-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:cfqmringgroup3?rev=1366935619 Navigate back to the activity. Comments by Mary Bridget Kustusch (post-doc, teaching "Central Forces" Winter 2013): I chose to do this activity in class instead of Time Dependence for a Particle Confined to a Ring because I really wanted to emphasize series expansions later in the class and I felt this was a nice place to start introducing the key ideas. text/html 2013-04-25T17:15:58-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:cfqmringgroup4?rev=1366935358 Navigate back to the activity. Comments by Mary Bridget Kustusch (post-doc, teaching "Central Forces" Winter 2013): We did not do this activity in class in 2013. However, the worksheets was counted as extra credit and I assigned homework questions for the rigid roter (such as SphereQuestions) that required finding expectation values. text/html 2013-04-05T11:14:23-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:cfsurvivor?rev=1365185663 Navigate back to the activity. Comments by Mary Bridget Kustusch (post-doc, teaching "Central Forces" Winter 2013): In doing this activity with a large class, I had a group set up the scenario, but then I asked each table to consider the problem as if they were the group. I think it helped to streamline the group discussion. Once at least all of the major points were brought up (“how do you get a net momentum from nothing?”, difference in mass makes a difference, etc.), I brought the cl… text/html 2012-03-01T14:49:41-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:cfveffkin?rev=1330642181 Navigate back to the activity. Originally, we had a single, long Maple worksheet that first showed the effective potential, and then showed the orbit for any set of physical parameters. Unfortunately, without intervention, many students did not immediately see how these two different graphical representations were related to each other. We now address this issue by interposing the following kinesthetic activity. A single student, carefully chosen to be someone who will be comfortable with being… text/html 2013-05-14T13:27:06-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:cfylmcombo?rev=1368563226 Navigate back to the activity. Comments by Mary Bridget Kustusch (post-doc, teaching "Central Forces" Winter 2013): On some of the homework related to spherical harmonics, I saw several students struggling with the fact that $$\vert Y_1^1\vert^2+\vert Y_1^{-1}\vert^2\neq\vert Y_1^1+ Y_1^{-1}\vert^2$$ This activity may be one place to address when one wants the square of the sum (probability density for a linear combination) and when one wants the sum of squares (probability for measuring a… text/html 2012-07-17T14:42:10-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:eebbobjects?rev=1342561330 Navigate back to the activity. I have done this activity a couple of time, but ended up skipping it Spring 2011. I'm not sure whether it's worth doing next year. – David Roundy Activity was implemented again in Spring 2012. text/html 2012-07-17T14:47:39-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:eefairextens?rev=1342561659 Navigate back to the activity. I am not convinced that an information-theory first approach is ideal, so I do not intend to use this activity in Spring 2012. – David Roundy text/html 2011-07-14T15:53:42-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:eefree_expansion?rev=1310684022 Navigate back to the activity. The first time I gave this quiz, in 2010, I was very surprised at the intensity of student responses in the discussion. Students are very concerned with where the entropy comes from in the case of free expansion, and have the feeling (although they wouldn't express it this way) that entropy should be conserved. The discussion took 30 minutes after the quiz was finished. text/html 2012-07-17T14:09:50-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:eemicrocanonens?rev=1342559390 Navigate back to the activity. I am not convinced that an information-theory first approach is ideal, so I do not intend to use this activity in Spring 2012. – David Roundy text/html 2011-07-14T15:53:42-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:eerubberband?rev=1310684022 Navigate back to the activity. Navigate Notes from 2009 This was a fun lab, but had a few issues. We had two groups using water and two groups using acetone (the “hot” and “cold” groups). Next time round, I think I'll switch to only using water, as it was much easier to deal with, although we might need more than the two electric tea kettles we used. Because the water is easier to deal with, it's easier to accumulate more data. text/html 2012-07-17T14:52:21-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:eesolvefair?rev=1342561941 Navigate back to the activity. I am not convinced that an information-theory first approach is ideal, so I do not intend to use this activity in Spring 2012. – David Roundy text/html 2012-07-17T14:39:38-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:eesomeneverall?rev=1342561178 Navigate back to the activity. I've only done this activity once. I think it is a good idea, but getting the questions right is tricky, and it's absolutely necessary to go over them with the TA in advance. So I'd be happy to hear any experiences you have with this, but can't recommend anyone try it without very careful consideration (as I intend to do this coming year). – David Roundy text/html 2011-07-14T20:55:23-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:emplanewave?rev=1310702123 Navigate back to the activity. by Corinne Manogue We have often used this activity in faculty-development workshops and TA training to make the point that students have to put many different ideas together to really understand why a given mathematical expression corresponds to a particular physical behavior. It is quite surprising that many graduate students do not see the ``plane wave'' nature of this activity until the very last step, when they are asked to describe $\cos(\vec k\cdot\rr -\o… text/html 2015-09-28T13:24:45-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:mvheater?rev=1443471885 Navigate back to the activity. Comments by Tevian Dray in Fall 2015: I used this activity on the first day of class in MTH 255H (multivariable calculus). It provided a nice introduction to representations of functions of several variables, even though I only had 10--15 minutes. I provided large whiteboards, but the students didn't really use them. The next class, I did a very quick (5 minute) wrapup covering the first few questions only. Despite the rush, I felt the activity helped set … text/html 2011-07-14T15:53:42-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:osfourierguess?rev=1310684022 Navigate back to the activity. Students try many ways to solve this problem, and the series is simple enough that most groups can eventually “guess-and-check” to the answer. However, instructor guidance makes the path more efficient, and helps elicit reasons for the success or failure of different strategies. One effective way to guide students is to ask them what they see as the dominant component in the oscillatory nature of the function. text/html 2012-05-30T19:48:41-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:ospendulumworksheet?rev=1338432521 Navigate back to the activity. This activity requires leading the students rather more than one would like, but it does help them tackle a problem essential to understanding their experiment. It also represents a level of sophistication beyond introductory physics that sets the tone for the rest of the year. The mathematics is not “difficult” in any intrinsic sense - it is all algebra once the basic idea of series expansion is known. However, it requires accuracy, persistence, some experi… text/html 2012-01-10T16:48:54-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:prlineartrans?rev=1326242934 Navigate back to the activity. Comments by Corinne Manogue: This is my (CAM) very favorite of the activities in the whole Paradigms Program. Light bulbs go on everywhere. Student leave the activity with a definition for eigenvectors that is easily generalized to eigenfunctions and eigenstates in quantum mechanics. text/html 2011-07-14T15:53:42-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:prmatrixelems?rev=1310684022 Navigate back to the activity. David McIntyre, Winter 2010: This is a good, quick activity to make it clear how indices label matrix elements, and how bra-ket and matrix representations are related. text/html 2011-07-14T20:55:18-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:qmtwospin?rev=1310702118 Navigate back to the activity. 5 Feb 2010, David McIntyre: Student issues: 1) Missing subscripts. Missing $S^2$ operator equation. 2) Not sure about eigenvalues; saying spin ½ does not trigger reaction desired. 3) Most OK. Different orderings, but preferred order did come out. text/html 2016-04-25T15:50:17-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:rfacc?rev=1461624617 Navigate back to the activity. This activity makes a good kinesthetic activity. For the Coriolis acceleration, designate an origin, then ask students to hold their arm out in the direction of $\rr$, then to determine the direction of $\Omega\times\rr$, and finally to determine the direction of $-\Omega\times(\Omega\times\rr)$. For the Coriolis accelerations, ask students to stand up and face in any direction they choose --- their velocity $\vv_R$ --- then have them work out the direction of $-… text/html 2011-07-14T15:53:42-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:rfearthhockey?rev=1310684022 Navigate back to the activity. web link to animations text/html 2011-07-14T15:53:42-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:rfeframes?rev=1310684022 Navigate back to the activity. This activity was originally developed by Ethan Minot, a new faculty member at OSU teaching this course for the first time, using materials previously developed as part of the Paradigms Project. Tevian Dray used this activity in 2010: I found this activity to be a nice summative experience for the students. I chose to omit the column on “proper velocity”, as well as the variable names (E, p, etc), preferring to have the students construct this information f… text/html 2011-07-14T15:53:42-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:rfehockey1?rev=1310684022 Navigate back to the activity. This is a marvelous activity, and one of the original centerpieces of the Paradigms Project. An older version of this activity can be found here. text/html 2011-07-14T15:53:42-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:rfehockey2?rev=1310684022 Navigate back to the activity. As with the turntable hockey activity, This Maple worksheet is set up as a black box. Yes, the code is visible --- and students have been known to modify it during class. But the current implementation is intended to allow students to draw various trajectories quickly, without worrying too much about about the computational details. text/html 2011-07-14T15:53:42-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:rfinertial?rev=1310684022 Navigate back to the activity. Language is tricky: a spaceship moving at constant velocity with respect to the fixed stars is clearly in an inertial frame in both Newtonian theory and special relativity. But what about close to a massive object? In Newtonian theory, one simply treats gravity as an external force --- and assumes it does not act on the inertial observer. One could adopt this convention in special relativity, but doesn't: Special relativity assumes there is no gravity, and grav… text/html 2011-07-14T15:53:42-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:rflinacc?rev=1310684022 Navigate back to the activity. Be sure to think through in advance which way the train is moving (left), which way it is accelerating (right), who is throwing the ball (the inertial observer), and who is observing it (the accelerating observer). text/html 2011-07-14T15:53:42-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:rfnorth?rev=1310684022 Navigate back to the activity. I tried this activity for the first time in 2010. Although students had fun, it was not clear to me whether the knowledge gained was worth the time spent. Rotating the balloon at constant speed was not always easy, making it difficult to investigate more complicated trajectories --- as is done for example in the Earth Hockey activities. On the other hand, this activity is much simpler than those, and provides immediate visual feedback. text/html 2011-07-14T15:53:42-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:rfthockey?rev=1310684022 Navigate back to the activity. This Maple worksheet is set up as a black box. Yes, the code is visible --- and students have been known to modify it during class. But the current implementation is intended to allow students to draw various trajectories quickly, without worrying too much about about the computational details. text/html 2011-07-14T15:53:42-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:rftrig?rev=1310684022 Navigate back to the activity. This simple activity gets students to reflect on what's really important about trigonometry, something they may never have done despite years of using trig. It also sets the stage beautifully for the analogous results in hyperbola trigonometry. text/html 2012-08-09T18:40:47-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:rfturn?rev=1344562847 Navigate back to the activity. Tevian Dray This activity was originally a homework problem requiring a trip to a nearby park --- there was one within a mile with a merry-go-round, which unfortunately no longer exists. The OSU Physics Department has since constructed a rotating chair with a flat platform attached. text/html 2013-01-15T10:21:03-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:splorentzforce?rev=1358274063 Navigate back to the activity. Comments by Mary Bridget Kustusch (Winter 2013): Corinne and I were trying to remember all the issues associated with this example. We were wrestling with why a loop precesses until we remember that it has angular momentum to begin with, which the torque is trying to change ($\tau = dL/dt$). It precesses because the initial angular momentum is in the direction of $\mu$ and $\tau=\Delta L=\mu\times B$. text/html 2011-07-14T15:53:42-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:spneutrinos?rev=1310684022 Navigate back to the activity. In Winter 2010, it was found that students did not fully grasp this segment. This may be because it was toward the end of the paradigm and they were struggling with their time-evolution work, but I (Dedra Demaree) felt that the students were overwhelmed with new terminology and couldn't grab hold of what I was talking about. They are unfamiliar with particle physics and it had been a long time since they had thought about relativistic energy. In order to have t… text/html 2011-07-14T15:53:42-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:spspin1?rev=1310684022 Navigate back to the activity. It was found that students were inclined to simply turn in 0, 1 and 1/2 as answers to the majority of the lab activities, without clearly showing their understanding. They were also not motivated to think about the statistical nature of their results. The lab was edited in 2010 to help improve these issues. The new version emphasizes having students observe patterns in the data, draw conclusions based on those observations, then test their conclusions with more… text/html 2011-07-14T15:53:42-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:spspin2?rev=1310684022 Navigate back to the activity. This lab has been edited in 2010 to clarify steps needed to complete the lab. Students have difficulty with this lab - they are unsure 'how much' data to take (and need reminded of the statistics they did in lab 1), and have a very difficult time with the calculations. text/html 2012-01-24T17:00:10-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:spspinoneanalyzer?rev=1327453210 Navigate back to the activity. Comments by Mary Bridget Kustusch (post-doc, co-teaching "Spins" in Winter 2012): This year, we had assigned the Spins 1/2 Unknowns as a homework assignment and did the Spins 1 in class. We had them do this activity and the Finding the Unknown States Leaving the Oven in a Spin-1 System activity immediately afterward. text/html 2012-01-24T16:57:11-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:spspinoneunknowns?rev=1327453031 Navigate back to the activity. Comments by Mary Bridget Kustusch (post-doc, co-teaching "Spins" in Winter 2012): This year, we had assigned the Spins 1/2 Unknowns as a homework assignment and did the Spins 1 in class. We had them do the Probabilities for Different Spin-1 Stern Gerlach Analyzers activity first. text/html 2012-02-18T09:01:20-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:vccone?rev=1329584480 Navigate back to the activity. TD 2/17/12: This activity was done this year prior to any discussion of using $d\rr_1\times d\rr_2$ to do surface integrals, although this was hinted at during the previous lecture. One or two groups nonetheless (eventually) approached the problem this way, but most did not. text/html 2012-02-08T22:10:59-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:vcmmm?rev=1328767859 Navigate back to the activity. See the comments here. text/html 2011-07-14T20:55:11-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:vcwire?rev=1310702111 Navigate back to the activity. CAM 1/26/11: I did this activity as a substitute teacher in Tevian's Honors vector calculus class. It worked really well, particularly because it forces students to think geometrically about their algebraic calculations. I was surprised by the following things: text/html 2011-11-17T15:12:15-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:vfampere?rev=1321571535 Navigate back to the activity. by Corinne Manogue by Mary Bridget Kustusch text/html 2011-07-14T15:53:43-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:vfaring?rev=1310684023 Navigate back to the activity. Use the verbal directions below instead of a handout: Students should be assigned to work in groups of three and given the following instructions using the visual of a hula hoop or other large ring: ``This is a ring with total charge Q and radius R that is spinning with period T. Find the magnetic vector potential due to this ring in all space. Stop when you have an expression that could be evaluated using Maple.'' text/html 2011-07-14T20:55:04-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:vfbasisvectors?rev=1310702104 Navigate back to the activity. A note about conventions for spherical coordinates. The conventions that the physicists and mathematicians typically use for spherical coordinates are different. Physicists tend to use theta for the angle down from the $z$-axis. Mathematicians tend to use $\phi$. Warn your students explicitly about this difference, it is a major source of confusion. (For more information, see: Tevian Dray and Corinne A. Manogue, Spherical Coordinates, College Mathematics Jou… text/html 2011-07-14T15:53:43-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:vfbring?rev=1310684023 Navigate back to the activity. Use the verbal directions below instead of a handout: Students should be assigned to work in groups of three and given the following instructions using the visual of a hula hoop or other large ring: ``This is a ring with total charge Q and radius R spinning with period T. Find the magnetic field due to this ring in all space. Stop when you have an expression that could be evaluated using Maple.'' text/html 2011-07-14T15:53:43-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:vfchargedensity?rev=1310684023 Navigate back to the activity. David Roundy --- This went surprisingly smoothly and quickly. I had been a bit concerned that we'd have chaos, but students very quickly worked out what they were to do. Since all the students are working together, everyone stayed on the same page. text/html 2011-11-29T11:13:16-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:vfconductors?rev=1322593996 Navigate back to the activity. Comments by Mary Bridget Kustusch (co-teaching Vector Fields, Fall 2011) Students had much more difficulty with this problem than we anticipated. Very few were reasoning about charges moving. Many thought that the charge was distributed on the surface (instead of the charge polarizing the conductor) and more than one group were overgeneralizing the “balancing” and thought that the field inside the cavities would be zero. text/html 2014-10-25T10:51:31-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:vfcurlvis?rev=1414259491 Navigate back to the activity. We proceed this activity with a derivation of the rectangular expression for curl from the definition that (the magnitude of a particular component of) curl is the circulation per unit length around an appropriately chosen planar loop. Our derivation follows the one in “Div, grad, curl and all that”, Schey, 2nd edition, Norton, 1973, p. 74. text/html 2011-07-14T15:53:43-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:vfdadvcurvi?rev=1310684023 Navigate back to the activity. David Roundy --- this activity went very smoothly for me, and probably took less than the listed 20 minutes. I used the compare and contrast approach, so each group found just one or two volume or area elements, and then we all reported. Students seemed engaged throughout. text/html 2011-11-10T15:15:17-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:vfdivergence?rev=1320966917 Navigate back to the activity. by Mary Bridget Kustusch - postdoc co-teaching the Paradigms Fall 2011 In going through these divergence activities - particularly the Mathematica (or Maple) worksheet - there is a significant emphasis on what the divergences is at this point. For me, this emphasis broke through years of thinking of divergence as a property of a field to finally realizing that it is a field itself. In physics courses so often we talk about the divergence of the field for a charge… text/html 2011-07-14T15:53:43-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:vfdrawquadrupole?rev=1310684023 Navigate back to the activity. We use this activity as part of a sequence of activities designed to help students exploit several different representations of electrostatic fields. text/html 2011-07-14T15:53:43-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:vfebound?rev=1310684023 Navigate back to the activity. Students at this stage don't know that they need to give a name (i.e. assign a variable) to the thing they are trying to find. They do this in very simple 1-step, intro problems, but not in more complex problems. I often use their flailing with the idea of the E(above) and E(below) as an opportunity to give a sermon on this topic. “Name the thing you don't know” is my mneumonic. They will have further problems with this activity because they also won't thin… text/html 2014-11-01T18:29:08-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:vfering?rev=1414891748 Navigate back to the activity. Use the verbal directions below instead of a handout: Students should be assigned to work in groups of three and given the following instructions using the visual of a hula hoop or other large ring: ``This is a ring with total charge Q and radius R. Find the electrical field due to this ring in all space. Stop when you have an expression that could be evaluated using Maple.'' text/html 2012-08-16T14:06:48-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:vffluxcalculation?rev=1345151208 Navigate back to the activity. by Mary Bridget Kustusch (Fall 2011) This field ($\vec{F}=Cz\hat{z}$) gets at many good issues such as the dot product in the definition of flux, but one that it doesn't address is the cross product nature of $\vec{da}$. To address this, it might be helpful to have a field that has both $\hat{z}$ and $\hat{r}$ components. Then, both terms from $\vec{da}$ have to be kept. If you are working in spherical components, $\vec{da}$ only has a $\hat{\theta}$ component an… text/html 2011-12-20T14:32:21-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:vffluxconcept?rev=1324420341 Navigate back to the activity. Comments by Mary Bridget Kustusch (post-doc, co-teaching "Static Vector Fields" in Fall 2011): I taught the first few days of the Static Vector Fields course, which meant teaching a significant portion of the Geometry of Flux sequence. While the activity instructor guides were helpful, the narrative was even more so and most of my preparation was based on that narrative. text/html 2011-07-14T15:53:43-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:vffluxem?rev=1310684023 Navigate back to the activity. Electric field vectors are also a useful representation when students are learning about flux. One of our favorite visualization activities uses Maple to verify Gauss’s law for a point charge somewhere inside a unit cube. Using code that students can easily examine and alter, this worksheet first plots the electric field vectors due to a point charge as discussed above. Then the value of the integrand of the flux through the top of the cube is plotted. This inte… text/html 2013-05-09T12:51:25-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:vfgauss?rev=1368129085 Navigate back to the activity. Reflections from Mary Bridget Kustusch (Paradigms Postdoc) Fall 2012 (Note: I believe this was either 10/16/12 or 10/17/12) Due to some timing things, only about a third of the groups got through the whole problem by the end of class on one day. I wrapped up that day by having one student articulate the symmetry arguments for the cylindrical case and one for the spherical case. The next day, instead of asking the groups to finish the problem so that we could com… text/html 2012-02-08T22:07:29-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:vfmurdermm?rev=1328767649 Navigate back to the activity. Comments by Mary Bridget Kustusch (post-doc, co-teaching "Static Vector Fields" in Fall 2011): According to Ed Price, when his students were given a non-conservative field first, they assumed they had done the differentiation incorrectly instead of concluding that the field is non-conservative. text/html 2011-07-14T15:53:43-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:vfpowerseriescoeff?rev=1310684023 Navigate back to the activity. I found that in later activities where we created power series approximations for sets of point charges, students were confused by having to make a choice of $z_o$, the point they are expanding around. In practice, physicists only use Maclaurin series, and if I were to re-do this activity (and the associated maple worksheet), I would switch to using only Maclaurin series, and studying something like a Lorentzian or perhaps a Gaussian (since I think the Lorentzian… text/html 2011-07-14T15:53:43-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:vfstartrek?rev=1310684023 Navigate back to the activity. Elizabeth Gire - It seems that the activity would go more smoothly if the students who play Kirk and Spock knew what they were supposed to say. It might be nice to have a conversation with these students before the activity begins, or to hand them a synopsis of what they are supposed to know text/html 2011-07-14T15:53:43-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:vfvisv?rev=1310684023 Navigate back to the activity. Fall 2008 I asked the groups to play around with the maple worksheet, to change the distribution of charges and the plotting parameters. I was surprised at how absorbed the students became with this task (especially since only one student per group could control the keyboard). This dove-tailed nicely with the Visualing Equipotential Surfaces for a Quadrupole activity, because students could use Maple to check their answers. (Liz Gire) text/html 2012-02-16T15:01:17-08:00 http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/activities:reflections:local:wvoperatorfunc?rev=1329433277 Navigate back to the activity. Comments by Mary Bridget Kustusch (post-doc, co-teaching Winter 2012): This was a good activity for trying to get students to start thinking about eigenFUNCTIONS as opposed to eigenvectors. However, I think that more explicit parallels between what they became very used to in Spins, which bra-ket notation, might be helpful in addressing some of their difficulties.