Re: Computer Interfaces in the Physics Lab

[Larry Cartwright <exit60@IA4U.NET>]

On the other hand, if you have an experiment where you want to keep
track of the temperature over a period of many hours, or even days or
weeks, your $1500 thermometer is a godsend.  Unless you thrive on
arranging to have students come in at all hours of the day and night to
manually record the temperature.   Oh, but I forgot:  physics lab
activities never take more than an hour :-)

Best wishes,

Larry
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Larry Cartwright  <exit60@ia4u.net>
Physics and Physical Science Teacher
Charlotte HS, Charlotte MI USA
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Scott Rippetoe wrote:
> Pasco used to have me help with conventions, "teaching" in their "classroom"
> on the floor of the NSTA exhibits area. One of my favorite tricks during my
> presentation was to go through all the steps connecting a temperature
> sensor, adding a graph and table display, setting a stop condition, etc.
> then pointing out that essentially all we had done was make a $1500
> thermometer. The point was that in this case it would be much better to walk
> into the storeroom and grab a thermometer than to bother with computer
> interfacing. The temperature sensor offers few advantages over a regular
> thermometer. It responds as slowly as a regular thermometer, has the same
> effective range, and the same level of precision. I thought it was pretty
> funny that we would brag about collecting temperature data at 10 Hz when it
> took nearly 30 seconds for the sensor to respond to large temeprature
> changes.