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AAPT environment session:summary



SUMMARY OF AAPT SESSION: ENVIRONMENTAL TOPICS IN PHYSICS COURSES (Aug.
1996; College Park, Maryland)

This was a 3 hour afternoon session in a hot classroom packed to
overflowing. A show of hands informed us that about half of the audience
regularly teach environmental issues in a course. However, very few include
environmental issues in a course for science or engineering majors. Most of
the audience want more ideas next year, for how to include environmental
issues in their courses.

A 1/2 hour discussion at the end of the session focused on thermodynamics.
This is a topic that the attendees value greatly and that is very important
to teach, in order to promote environmental responsibility. Sadly, it is
being dropped from the curriculum all over the nation.

Here is my first group of summaries. More later, as I find time.
Cheers,
Jane Jackson (one of the 10 or so organizers of this session)

1. Art Hobson and Randy Knight each spoke about their experiences using
Hobson's new college text for nonscience majors, PHYSICS: CONCEPTS AND
CONNECTIONS. Art says that this text is suitable for high school courses
too, and he'll ask the publisher, Prentice Hall, to make free desk copies
available to high school teachers.

* Art told us how he incorporates global warming in the course. His
text has 8 pages of info and diagrams and numerous discussion questions on
global warming, midway in the book, after thermodynamics and e & m. Art's
handouts included a superb 2-page list of up-to-date references on global
warming from SCIENCE magazine and others, and 11 pages of transparency
masters for use in teaching a short non-mathematical module on global
warming within an introductory physics course. Write to
ahobson@comp.uark.edu for these handouts.

* Randy assigned his students to work in teams to write a 10-page
paper on global warming or ozone depletion. He discovered that the students
couldn't recognize scientific evidence, and so he stressed our need to
focus on teaching what evidence and hypotheses are, early in our courses.

2. Gordon Aubrecht showed us how, in ANY of our courses, the harmonic
oscillator can be the input to learning about global warming via a
mass-spring model of the carbon dioxide molecule. For a kinesthetic
understanding of the various motions, let your head represent the carbon
molecule and your 2 upraised hands the oxygen molecules - and MOVE. This
is powerful because it shows that CO2 is an effective greenhouse gas
because of its variety of possible motions! For an upper division course,
writing the Lagrangian is straightforward and illuminating. One can
continue the discussion at any level by introducing resonance. (Note:
Gordon published an article on teaching global warming to physics majors in
THE PHYSICS TEACHER, March 1988, p. 145-152.)

3. Celia Chung Chow suggested using infrared film to determine heat
pollution. She orders the film at the film store; it costs $15 for a roll
of 36. Developing is another $15.

4. Norman Chonacky reported on a project that physics classes in 9 high
schools did, where they investigated the quality of their school's heating
system. Here is his summary.

The problem for students to solve: Find a practical way to evaluate
the relative quality/efficiency of your school's heating system as compared
to the other schools.

What does the teacher need to do to get things started?
First, insure that her/his students can send messages on the Internet to
each of the other classes in the collaboration. To start the class
working, the teacher needs to lead a
"brainstorming" seminar with the students in which they "frame" the problem
to be solved and then brainstorm for (a) variables to measure and (b)
methods of analysis/modeling to achieve a result that they can compare with
other schools' results.

What do students do, and how long should they spend, to solve the
problem?
The students, as a class, communicate using electronic mail with the other
collaborating classes, as units, in order to: a) negotiate and agree upon
which variables to measure and
which method to analyze the data to arrive at a result for
quality/efficiency for their school that can be compared with analogous
results from the other schools.
b) make the measurements and analyze the data to obtain a
quality/efficiency measure, and compare/discuss results with the other
schools.
c) classes can spend from as little as a few days to as much as a few
weeks - not necessarily continuous - of class time on this project.

For further commentary and information from the project director, send a
note to: <chonacky@elwha.evergreen.edu>

Norman described also a collaborative effort that he did last spring with
PROJECT GREEN, a national effort to get interdisciplinary science and math
into K-12 classrooms using the environment as a focus. As part of the
planning process, he conducted a mini-workshop with local K-12 teachers -
really a "focus group". His report is available at :
http://192.211.16.13/individuals/jocho/workshop/workshop.html






Jane Jackson (Prof. of Physics, Scottsdale Comm. College--on leave)
Dept.of Physics, Box 871504, Arizona State Univ.,Tempe AZ 85287-1504.
jane.jackson@asu.edu (602)965-8438 FAX:965-7331
Modeling Workshop Project: http://modeling.la.asu.edu/modeling.html