Volume 55 Issue 9, December 2017

 

The Physics Teacher

This month's cover is “Oobleck on a Speaker” by Darren Seaney at Glenbard West HS (teacher: Bruce Medic) in Glen Ellyn, IL, one of the winners of the 2017 AAPT High School Physics Photo Contest. Oobleck is a mixture of cornstarch and water (and sometimes food coloring) that is endlessly entertaining because you can slowly dip your toe into it, like in any liquid, but if you punch it, it turns as solid as the floor. 

 

 

Letters to the Editor

A cautionary note on operationally defining force and mass by Eugene Hecht. DOI: 10.1119/1.5011819

Author’s response by Andreas Valadakis. DOI: 10.1119/1.5011820

More on English vs. SI units by Frank Lock. DOI: 10.1119/1.5011821

Columns

And the Survey Says..., Figuring Physics, iPhysicsLabs, Little Gems,  Astronotes, Physics Challenge for Teachers and Students, Fermi Questions, Talkin' Physics, Visual Physics, and Websights.

Papers

“All Students Are Brilliant”: A Confession of Injustice and a Call to Action by Amy D. Robertson, and Leslie J. Atkins Elliott. DOI: 10.1119/1.5011823

You Don’t Look Like a Physicist by Antonio Carlos Fontes Santos. DOI: 10.1119/1.5011824

Optimizing the Launch of a Projectile to Hit a Target by Carl E. Mungan. DOI: 10.1119/1.5011825

Best Practices for Administering Concept Inventories by Adrian Madsen, Sarah B. McKagan, and Eleanor C. Sayre. DOI: 10.1119/1.5011826

Partially Covered Lenses and Additive Color Mixing by Nada Razpet, and Tomaž Kranjc. DOI: 10.1119/1.5011827

A New Resonance Tube by Alan Bates. DOI: 10.1119/1.5011830

A New Look at an Old Activity: Resonance Tubes Used to Teach Resonance by Jim, and Jane Nelson. DOI: 10.1119/1.5011831

“Einstein’s Playground”: An Interactive Planetarium Show on Special Relativity by Zachary Sherin, Philip Tan, Heather Fairweather, and Gerd Kortemeyer. DOI: 10.1119/1.5011832

Pendulum Underwater – An Approach for Quantifying Viscosity by José Costa Leme, and Agostinho Oliveira. DOI: 10.1119/1.5011833

Analyzing Virtual Physics Simulations with Tracker by Tom Claessens. DOI: 10.1119/1.5011834

Work and Inertial Frames by Richard Kaufman. DOI: 10.1119/1.5011835

Data Collection During the Great American Eclipse by Dave Vernier. DOI: 10.1119/1.5011836

Modeling as an Anchoring Scientific Practice for Explaining Friction Phenomena by Drew Neilson, and Todd Campbell. DOI: 10.1119/1.5011837

Designing Efficient Self-Diagnosis Activities in the Physics Classroom by Rafi’ Safadi. DOI: 10.1119/1.5011839

Enhancing physics demos using iPhone slow motion by James Lincoln. DOI: 10.1119/1.5011847

Book Reviews

Women in Science: Not for the Weak of Heart: The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science is Still a Boys’ Club; Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science-and the World by Maryanne Angliongto. DOI: 10.1119/1.5011828

When Computers Were Women: The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars by Scott Henderson. DOI: 10.1119/1.5011829

Additional Resources

Race and Physics Teaching Collection Resource

DNA Science Lesson & Digi-Kit

Inspired by an article from The Physics Teacher, this multidisciplinary lesson and digital resource collection is based on How Rosalind Franklin Discovered the Helical Structure of DNA: Experiments in Diffraction (Braun, Tierney, & Schmitzer, 2011). Click the image to access this resource.

 

Article Collections from TPT and AJP    

 

TPT Presents: Columns and other Collections from The Physics Teacher