Orbax, Production Specialist for Physics Education Content, Dept of Physics, University of Guelph
orbax@uoguelph.ca

Greetings educators! Orbax here from the Department of Physics at the University of Guelph.

I’m here to speak to you today about a very important topic.

You’re likely aware of a newly discovered disease that has been sweeping across Ontario in the last few weeks.

Eclipse fever has taken hold and it’s taking over news broadcasts, school board meetings, targeted ads and classrooms throughout our province. Read More...

Tags: Astronomy, History, Safety

Robert Prior, ePublisher OAPT Newsletter
science@robertprior.ca

There’s a lot of good physics (and math) embedded in the grade nine space unit, if you know where to look for it. David Butler is a retired computer scientist who is fascinated with space, and he’s applied his mathematical background to explaining, in simple terms, what’s behind the fancy pictures we see from NASA, and how we know what we know about the universe. To do this he’s created a series of video books focusing on different topics, as well as hundreds of short classroom-ready video clips on topics ranging from astronomy to quantum mechanics. Read More...

Tags: Astronomy, Cosmology, Diversity, History, Math, Modern Physics, Quantum

Robert Prior, ePublisher of OAPT Newsletter
science@robertprior.ca

Have you ever wished you could write like a great scientist? Now you can, with Harald Geisler’s Einstein font. It won’t give you Einstein’s brains or his cool hair, but at least you can have his handwriting. Read More...

Tags: History

Roberta Tevlin, OAPT Newsletter Editor, Teacher at Danforth CTI
roberta@tevlin.ca

One of the standard parts of an introductory physics course is a study of Newton’s Three Laws of Motion. They are part of the Ontario curriculum for grade 11 physics and most teachers would agree that they are essential. Chris Meyer has presented an improved way to teach the three laws of motion that will deepen student understanding: Teaching Forces I and Teaching Forces II.

In this article, I hope to reinforce Chris’ approach with a look at how the history of these three laws is wrongly presented. Read More...

Tags: Forces, History, Kinematics, Motion, Pedagogy, Projectile Motion

Roberta Tevlin, Editor OAPT Newsletter, Teacher at Danforth CTI
Roberta@tevlin.ca

We need to incorporate more diverse examples of scientists in our courses. Sara Cormier (Physics Instructor at McMaster University) and I are trying to develop resources that will help teachers to do this. (If you would like to be a part of this — please send me an email!)

I started to compile a data base of good examples when I found myself completely distracted by the work of Rosalind Franklin. Her work on the X-ray crystallography of DNA fits perfectly into a lesson about the interference of light! As well as showcasing an important female scientist, an examination of her work can deepen students’ understanding of interference patterns and it highlights a very important connection between biology, chemistry and physics. I found a couple of short videos and a really simple, cheap demo that shows why the interference pattern formed by DNA provides clear evidence of its helical structure! Read More...

Tags: Diversity, History, Light, Nobel Prize

Brian Lim, Teacher Rosedale Heights School of the Arts, Toronto
Brian.lim@tdsb.on.ca

“In the beginning…”

So starts one of the most famous and influential stories in Western civilization. Neil Degrasse Tyson continues the narrative this way:

“...sometime between 12 and 16 billion years ago, all the space and all the matter and all the energy of the known universe was contained in a volume less than one-trillionth the size of the point of a pin. Conditions were so hot, the basic forces of nature that collectively describe the universe were unified. For reasons unknown, this sub-pin-pint-size cosmos began to expand…” [1] Read More...

Tags: History, Pedagogy