[Phys-L] Re: In the Private Universe

[Anthony Lapinski <anthony_lapinski@PDS.ORG>]

I teach the seasons because people don't know what really causes them. So
hopefully they can appreciate and understand the physical world around
them. To me, this is very important. The seasons affect all of us.
Critical thinking skills -- what if the Earth weren't tilted?

Each teacher has a "specialty" or area of interest. We'll never agree on
what should be taught, or even how it should be taught. On a related note:
Heat is taught in chemistry. Does that mean we should not teach it in
physics? The books present the info in quite different ways, and I imagine
it is taught (conceptually) differently too.

Forum for Physics Educators <PHYS-L@list1.ucc.nau.edu> on Thursday,
February 24, 2005 at 4:13 PM -0500 wrote:
> On reflection, explaining the seasons is probably by far the most
> complicated and difficult of the "elementary" science concepts. One could
> easily spend a whole week teaching the concepts necessary to understand
> the correct explanation for the seasons. It's no surprise that most
> people haven't "gotten" it. Light bulbs, on the other hand... never mind.
>
> A large globe with two solar cells attached to it works. One solar cell
> is attached to the equator, the other near the pole, so that they are
> tangent to the surface of the globe. Attaching a large voltmeter to each
> cell, then illuminating the globe with a projector, shows that the tilt
> makes a difference in how much energy is available. I haven't done it,
> but saw it done on a kid-science TV show once. It was a cool demo.
>
> Topic for conversation:  How important is it, really, that most people
> understand the seasons? We no longer use the motions of the Sun, Moon,
> and stars for navigation or timekeeping, so most people have no practical
> use for this information. The seasons will happen just the same whether
> they are fully understood or not. Is this a topic worth spending a lot of
> instructional time on? Or in an over-packed school year of physics, is
> there something else more worthy of our limited instructional time, like
> electrical safety, global warming, lasers, medical imaging, or
> transistors? And whatever happened to Simple Machines?  Their loss is
> deplorable, as is anything else "applied." Why don't we ditch electric
> and magnetic fields (a topic best understood at advanced levels)in favor
> of basic semiconductors or liquid crystal displays? What physics topics
> should be considered "essential" today?
>
> Vickie Frohne
> vfrohne@ben.edu
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Forum for Physics Educators [mailto:PHYS-L@list1.ucc.nau.edu]On
> Behalf Of John M Clement
> Sent: Thursday, February 24, 2005 11:22 AM
> To: PHYS-L@LISTS.NAU.EDU
> Subject: Re: In the Private Universe
>
>
> One of the things that has been ignored in discussion of the seasons
> is that it is a cognitively difficult thing to understand.
>
> *lots of good stuff snipped*
>
> A useful thing would be to have a model of the earth where the
> students could observe the amount of light intensity/area.  I would
> propose a globe with either a light sensor imbedded in it attached to
> a meter, or a translucent section that provides light in the interior,
> and a peephole that students could observe the light intensity.  Then
> students could see the effect of the angle.  Then they could explore
> how the angle and the illumination changes with the seasons.
>
> John M. Clement
> Houston, TX