In his Phys-L post of 8 Oct 2002 19:33:55-0400 titled "Arons and Dry Ice,"
Justin Park wrote (slightly edited):
"I read in Arons [sorry don't have the specific reference. . .(it's
Arons 1990). . .] earlier today the section on introducing Newton's
laws and specifically the concept of inertia and the effects of
forces on a body's motion. He recommends a 50-lb piece of dry ice on
a sheet of glass. (!) Has anyone done this? How big is the sheet of
glass? How big is 50 lbs of dry ice?"
Has anyone done this? YES! The Arons
50-lb-dry-ice-floating-on-glass-method of getting Newton's First Law
across to students was used very successfully for many years at
Indiana University as part of Socratic Dialogue Inducing (SDI) Lab #1
"Newton's First and Third Laws," Section V. "Forces On A Massive
Block of 'Dry Ice' Floating on Glass." That lab and 8 other SDI labs
are available online at <http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi>.
Teacher's Guides (TG's) are available for most of the labs, but
currently TG's are online only for SDI Labs #0.2 and 3 (password
protected at the Galileo site <http://galileo.harvard.edu/>). I hope
to get more TG's online in the near future (as I've been saying for
10 years). Until then, the 65-page, 5.5 oz. hard-copy TG for SDI Lab
#1 (that includes details on setting up the dry-ice experiment) will
be snail-mailed to anyone willing to send me $5.00 to cover the cost
of copying and mailing.
I think most of the eight Phys-L posts
<http://lists.nau.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S2=phys-l&q=&s=arons&f=&a=2002&b=>
in response to Justin have missed the importance of Arons's sage
emphasis on KINESTHETIC EXPERIENCE in overcoming preconceptions. To
appreciate this one needs to see students' eyes light up when they
first accelerate a 50-lb dry ice block floating on glass to some
velocity v and then see the block sailing majestically away from them
with undiminished v.
As stated in an earlier post (Hake 2002a):
". . .(the Arons inspired). . . SDI labs. . .[despite their
demonstrated effectiveness (Hake 1998a,b; 2002b,c)] are virtually
unknown to most physics teachers and Physics Education Researchers
(PER's), and generally ignored in standard PER reference volumes
(e.g., Redish & Rigden 1997). For an online article on SDI labs see
Hake (1992).
REFERENCES
Arons, A.B. 1990. "A Guide to Introductory Physics Teaching." Wiley;
reprinted with minor updates in "Teaching Introductory Physics"
(Wiley, 1997).
Hake, R.R. 1992. "Socratic pedagogy in the introductory physics lab.
Phys. Teach. 30: 546-552; updated version (4/27/98) online as ref. 3
at <http://physics.indiana.edu/~sdi/>.
Hake, R.R. 1998a. "Interactive-engagement vs traditional methods: A
six-thousand-student survey of mechanics test data for introductory
physics courses." Am. J. Phys. 66(1): 64-74; online at
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi/>.
Hake, R.R. 1998b. "Interactive-engagement methods in introductory
mechanics courses," online at <http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi/>
and SUBMITTED on 6/19/98 to the "Physics Education Research
Supplement to AJP"(PERS). [A crucial companion paper to Hake (1998a)
- PER has NO archival journal!] Average pre/post test scores,
standard deviations, instructional methods, materials used,
institutions, and instructors for each of the survey courses of
Hake(1998a) are tabulated and referenced. In addition the paper
includes: (a) case histories for the seven IE courses of Hake (1998a)
whose effectiveness as gauged by pre-to-post test gains was close to
those of T courses, (b) advice for implementing IE methods, and (c)
suggestions for further research.
Hake, R.R. 2002b. "Lessons from the physics education reform effort."
Conservation Ecology 5(2): 28; online at
<http://www.consecol.org/vol5/iss2/art28>. "Conservation Ecology," is
a FREE "peer-reviewed journal of integrative science and fundamental
policy research" with about 11,000 subscribers in about 108 countries.
Hake, R.R. 2002c. "Comment on 'How do we know if we are doing a good
job in physics teaching?' by Robert Ehrlich," Am. J. Phys. 70(10):
1058-1059; online as ref. 17 at
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>.
Redish, E.F. & J.S. Rigden, eds. 1997. "The Changing Role of Physics
Departments in Modern Universities: Proceedings of the ICUPE." AIP.
This posting is the position of the writer, not that of SUNY-BSC, NAU or the AAPT.