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[Physltest] [Phys-L] Re: seeing what you believe



In her PhyLrnR post of 21 Nov 2004 titled "Re: seeing what you
believe," Marina Milner (2004) wrote:

"I think a recent paper . . . [Crouch et al. (2004)] . . . touches
this point [students seeing what they believe in classroom demos].
There are many other papers dealing with the same issue.

In a post "Re: Cool Demo for Newton's First Law?" (Hake 2004) I wrote
[bracketed by lines "HHHHHHHHH. . . ."; see that post for references
other than Crouch et al. (2004)]:

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
The recently reported research of Crouch et al. (2004) is consistent
with previous work in suggesting the need for ALL students to be
actively engaged if demonstrations are to increase the overall
learning of a class. Crouch et al. write: "We find that students who
passively observe demonstrations understand the underlying concepts
no better than students who do not see the demonstration at all, in
agreement with previous studies. Learning is enhanced, however, by
increasing student engagement . . ."

Aside from simply varying the mode of presentation as discussed by
Crouch et al., one way to increase student engagement (for ALL
students) is to make use of the "Interactive Lecture Demonstrations"
of David Sokoloff & Ron Thornton (1997).

Another method, OVERLOOKED BY CROUCH ET AL. AND MOST OTHER PHYSICS
TEACHERS, is to get the students into the lab and let them do the
demonstrations as EXPERIMENTS in a Socratic Dialogue Inducing (SDI)
manner [Hake (1987; 1991; 1992; 2002a; 2004a,b); Tobias & Hake
(1988); Hake & Wakeland (1997). SDI labs emphasize hands- and
heads-on experience with simple mechanics experiments and facilitate
interactive engagement of students with course material.
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Marina Milner (2004) went on to write:

"Recently, I showed a demo dealing with a pendulum. We used a scale
to measure the tension in the string while the pendulum was still
(suppose it was 2 N) versus the tension in the string at the lowest
point when the pendulum was in motion. Although we all saw (or should
I say we all were supposed to see) that while the pendulum was in
motion the tension in the lowest point was higher than 2 N, many of
my students REMEMBERED that it was the same 2 N they have seen
before: I interviewed them. Some of them even tried to write correct
equations: T=mg+mv^2/R, however since it didn't make sense to them
and they REMEMBERED, the tension was 2 N they decided to choose 2 N
as an answer!"

For an interactive engagement version of the above demonstration see
Sect. VIII. "Motion of a pendulum bob" in SDI Lab #2 [Hake (1998)].
This and 9 other SDI Labs are freely downloadable as pdf's
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi>.

My experience has been that after SDI Lab #2 very few students think
that the tension in the pendulum bob string at the lowest point of
its swing is the same as the weight of the pendulum bob.

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
24245 Hatteras Street, Woodland Hills, CA 91367
<rrhake@earthlink.net>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi>

REFERENCES
Crouch, C.H., A.P. Fagen, P. Callen, E. Mazur, 2004. "Classroom
Demonstrations: Learning Tools or Entertainment?" Am. J. Phys. 72:
835-838; online as a 50kB pdf at
<http://mazur-www.harvard.edu/publications.php>.

Hake, R.R. 1998. "SDI Lab #2: Newton's Second Law," freely
downloadable (along with 8 other SDI Labs) at
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi> or simply click on
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi/sdi-2.pdf> (233kB).

Hake, R.R. 2004. "Re: Cool Demo for Newton's First Law?" online at
<http://lists.nau.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0406&L=phys-l&P=R11927>. Post
of 24 Jun 2004 21:20:44-0700 to AP-Physics, Phys-L, PhysLrnR, &
Physhare.

Milner, M. 2004. "Re: seeing what you believe," PhysLrnR post of
<http://listserv.boisestate.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0411&L=physlrnr&O=D&X=5215E76BE9D81575CB&Y=rrhake@earthlink.net&P=6299>.
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