Re: PHYS-L Digest - 1 Feb 2000 - Special issue (#2000-32)

[Charlie Payne <CoachPayne@AOL.COM>]

Herb:
    Here in the land of basketball I challenge my kids to jump up one meter,
and then tell them I can raise my nearly half-century old, short, fat body up
to the same height, and that I can run and  jump up on a table in a single
bound.  Naturally, I step, as those of us who ran the steeplechase in college
did in order to clear four barriers and a water jump each lap late in the
race.  This often leads to a discussion of high jumping and the location of
the high jumpers' center of gravity in their jump.  My kids love the
association of sports and physics.

Charlie Payne
Northern HS
Durham, NC
(from the place we will depart to take nearly 400 students or so from about
five high schools to do a physics of skiing lab on the ski slopes of
Virginia, as though we need to travel to more snow!)

In a message dated 02/01/2000 10:17:46 PM Eastern Standard Time,
LISTSERV@lists.nau.edu writes:

<< Date:    Tue, 1 Feb 2000 14:32:14 -0500
 From:    Herbert H Gottlieb <herbgottlieb@JUNO.COM>
 Subject: Re: Sig Figures

 On Tue, 01 Feb 2000 10:51:26 -0500 Richard Bowman
 <rbowman@BRIDGEWATER.EDU> writes:
> Here are a few comments on sig fig's.
>
> ......  Thus my  jumping up  onto my desk while asking students how far
 I am from the center of
> the  Earth makes no difference in the answer, if the distance to the
 center of
> the Earth is given as 6378 km.
>             6378 km
>         +      0.001 km
>        ------------
>             6378 km

 This is an interesting demo .... but I'm wondering how many physics
 teachers are really able
 to jump vertically a distance of one meter to the top of their desk.

 Herb Gottlieb from New York City
 (Where our aging teaching staff would be happy to jump up only half
 of a meter to their desk) >>