Re: [Phys-l] Good Questions

[John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>]

On 10/07/2006 06:26 PM, Cliff Parker wrote:
>   Questions I can ask my
> high school physics class that will cause them to apply things they have
> learned over the years in an effort to figure out the way things are or how
> they work.


You can construct a whole series of questions of the form
  How would you measure ____________?

As a good first example, how would you measure the height of the Empire
State Building?
 -- The celebrated "barometer" method(s).
      http://www.snopes.com/college/info/baromart.htm
    and many perversions thereof.
 -- Trigonometry.
 -- Measuring the bottom story directly, then multiplying by the number
  of stories.
 -- String.  (Not so easy because of all the setbacks.)
 ++ et cetera.


I like this one because there is more than one "right answer".

Maybe not in October, but maybe later in the year, you can have a
discussion of the uncertainties associated with each method.