Perhaps leaving Plank's constant off of the general sheet, but still providing frequencies on the last few pages so students can do some calculations if they have those tools. The initial sheet doesn't need that statement. You may be right.
Regarding moving energy / kinetic energy. There isn't any prequel. Since the conference is October 2nd and most Minnesota schools can not legally start prior to Labor Day, most folks won't have gotten to energy in their classroom by then. I thought this bit of hand-waving on the worksheet could possibly be compensated for by an instructor that reviews the material with their students. I wonder if putting in more information would be helpful, or if I would be putting more clutter on the page (like I did with E=hf).
I am open to additional comments there.
Thanks for the "particle" problem. I will look at it again.
E=mc^2:
Thanks for the input. I will go through and check those points. I found myself going in circles for the descriptions. The formatting took so much time, I didn't spend enough time on the text.
I have E_rest and E_moving on the energy bar charts. It seems you are suggesting I am more consistent in the text above the bar charts. That is certainly appropriate. Am I missing something else in addition to this problem?
I appreciate the constructive criticism. If anyone else has some suggestions, I am open to them. There are surely more issues with wording. Possibly some issues with the physics involved.
Thanks for your help.
A few comments that might put some of the activity and the gaps inherent within it in perspective.
This sheet is to prep kids for the Gustavus Adolphus Nobel Conference. Hopefully Kids will get this sheet before they have likely covered much for energy, momentum, or charges. I am hoping to that this sheet connects students to the content by simply being consistent with the vector nature of momentum (they have hopefully covered vectors in kinematics by then), the scalar nature of energy (they should know what a scalar is by then), and the idea of conservation (which may have to be taught to them at the time the sheet is assigned).
Paul Lulai.
St Anthony Village S.H.
-----Original Message-----
From: Phys-l [mailto:phys-l-bounces@phys-l.org] On Behalf Of Bruce Sherwood
Sent: Thursday, August 15, 2013 5:10 PM
To: Phys-L@Phys-L.org
Subject: Re: [Phys-L] particle physics intro sheet
I don't feel qualified to judge activities designed for kids, because I've never taught physics to kids, so my remarks won't be comprehensive.
In Interaction #5 (two high energy photons collide and produce an electron and a positron), I suggest deleting the sentence "The energy of the photons can be calculated by multiplying their frequency by something called Plank's Constant (E = hf)." The sentence introduces extraneous information.
No high-energy experimentalist would mention the frequency of a high-energy photon; the photon energy is just stated as the photon energy; one doesn't calculate the energy by evaluating hf. I see that this also comes up in Interactions #4 and #7.
Also in this exercise there seems to me to be some possible terminological confusion. Here is found the first mention of "moving energy" (presumably kinetic energy), but there doesn't seem to be any prequel to this concept.
In the sentences referring to "particles," there is possible confusion as to whether one means only the electron and positron, or whether the photons are also "particles."
In many cases the text is careful to say that mc^2 is the rest energy, but often we see the formula E = mc^2, which can be quite misleading. Probably one should say E_rest = mc^2, or some such, since the energy of a particle is gamma*mc^2.