Sunday, March 23, 2008

Making atomic physics fun

VCE year 11 physics unit 1, area of study 2 is Nuclear and Radioactivity Physics. The textbook is Heinemann Physics 11

http://msrb.wordpress.com/2007/09/12/hiroshima-peace-memorial/
The image files are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License (cc-by-sa-2.0)

The area of study is unfortunately didactic, which does not easily lead to higher order thinking and independent inquiry. The outcome is listed in terms of describe and apply, lower order skills on Bloom's Taxonomy. Only in assessing bias in the media and assesing risk do higher outcomes get mentioned.

Add teaching this to a group with a high proportion of English as a second language, though understanding the concepts may be easy, the language of instruction may be difficult.



A solution would be to lean heavily on visual and practical materials. Youtube has a a number of student created videos which give inspiration:

YouTube - Nuclear Physics in 3D ( good 3D modelling but does have some factual errors (I think) alpha particles not gamma and critical mass is more about amount of material than compression though compression needs to be maintained through fission
YouTube - Death Metal Physics[The cutlass head charity - atom] history of nuclear physics to a heavy metal sound track
YouTube - Nuclear Fusion, Fission, & Decay A fun and detailed explanation of the concepts, delivered with enthusiasm though the explanations may be unclear
YouTube - Nuclear Fission A 3D animation of nuclear fission made for an animation class using Maya and After Effects
YouTube - Fission (nuclear physics) simulate nuclear fission by running into each other on the sports ground

The mousetrap and pingpong demonstration
100 mousetraps
6000 mousetraps

more stuff

YouTube - Castle Bravo - What went wrong? Explaination
YouTube - Structure of the Atom 3: The Rutherford Model
YouTube - Nuclear Physics 8.1: Natural Transmutations
YouTube - Atom video
YouTube - physics atomic bomb nuclear test

the links in braces are temporarily? unavailable but you can get them in a zipfile if your school hasn't blocked this site
Open source {fission simulation} (requires GameMaker)
{Nuclear decay simulation standalone exe}

Applets from Physics 2000, University of Colorado Boulder
MIT open courseware lecture video and audio

Nanotechnology
When things get small University of California Television (thanks Karlie for links)
Cancer_killer_in_action
Cellular_visions_The_inner_life_of_a_cell

Girls and physics
Madam Curie video1 2 3 4

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