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Re: [Phys-l] "unlearning"



IIRC, I read he checked the isochronicity using his pulse!

I think your exercise is GREAT!


The exercise I used when taught (only one semester) the lab at Ventura College was to explore the pendulum, sugesting bob mass and rod (string) length. This before meeting in the text. One group came up to my desk to complain about the weird behaviour WRT amplitude. I goofed by announcing to the class how they had discovered this w/o hint. I shoulda told them to keep it secret to see if more would discover. Then give the hint w/ just enuff time for the others to check it out.


bc inexperienced


bc went to Pisa to visit the historical site.


On 2010, Sep 10, , at 09:29, Spagna Jr., George wrote:

In particular reference to the period of a pendulum. We routinely cover this in a lab exercise, in which we tell the students of Galileo's "discovery" that the period is independent of amplitude, and ask them to confirm or refute it. This exercise also requires them to assign uncertainties to their measurements and begin to trust the data even when it contradicts the "authority" of some famous scientist of old.

*******************************************************
"... politics determines who has the power,
not who has the truth."
- Paul Krugman
*******************************************************

Dr. George Spagna
Physics Department
Randolph-Macon College
P.O. Box 5005
Ashland, VA 23005-5505