Smashing Science
Question: What do you get when you take seven plastic dolls, replace their heads with eggs, attach a bungee cord, and drop them? Answer: A physics lesson.
This exercise, dubbed the “Barbie Bungee Jump,” models the pedagogy embraced by Buffalo State’s Summer Physics Teachers Academy.
The game plan in this case was for a team to drop a doll from a height, coming as close to the floor as possible, without smashing the egg. Each doll, carrying a duct-tape backpack to add some weight, was attached to a spring. Knowing the mass of its doll, and using their knowledge of Hooke’s Law and Conservation of Energy, each team calculated the height of the drop and the length of the spring to use. The winner had the highest ratio between the height dropped and the closeness to floor.
Most of the students in the PHY 510: New Physics Teacher Workshop, held July 11-23, were graduate students or high school teachers working toward their master’s degree in physics education; high school science or math teachers who have been asked to teach physics; and physics teachers who want to enhance their students’ understanding of physics.
David Henry, associate professor of elementary education and reading, was the lead instructor for this class; the three other teachers—Walter Pawlowski, Lowell Sylwester, and Laura Dustin—are retired master high school teachers.
“This pedagogy promotes critical thinking and ownership of the material,” said Henry. “We want our students to teach physics in a new and different way.”
Changing the high school physics classroom from a lecture-based pedagogy to an activity-based pedagogy has been the mission and joy of these teachers throughout their careers. “When I taught this way, I saw that kids learned to think things through and form their own game plans,” Pawlowski said.
Uniquely, the course combines standard NYSED Regents physics content with inventive approaches to pedagogy.
As it turns out, the winning team for the "Barbie Bungee Jump" exercise dropped its doll from a height of 2.5 meters and it fell to 23 cm above the floor. “In your classrooms,” Henry told the students, “you would give your students more information and direction, so they only have to calculate one variable.”
Henry and his fellow instructors estimate that about one-third of the physics teachers in New York State have taken this course. C. N. Colon, who teaches at St. Barnabas High School, an all-girls’ school in the Bronx, is joining that number. “I’m a math teacher,” she said, “We needed someone to teach physics, so I volunteered. I believe that the mark of a good physics class is touching it, feeling it, doing it. I’m here to learn the best ways to do that.”
Two additional 6-credit courses make up the rest of this year’s Summer Physics Teacher Academy (held through August 14): Powerful Ideas and Quantitative Modeling in Mechanics and Powerful Ideas and Quantitative Modeling in Electricity and Magnetism.
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This exercise, dubbed the “Barbie Bungee Jump,” models the pedagogy embraced by Buffalo State’s Summer Physics Teachers Academy.
The game plan in this case was for a team to drop a doll from a height, coming as close to the floor as possible, without smashing the egg. Each doll, carrying a duct-tape backpack to add some weight, was attached to a spring. Knowing the mass of its doll, and using their knowledge of Hooke’s Law and Conservation of Energy, each team calculated the height of the drop and the length of the spring to use. The winner had the highest ratio between the height dropped and the closeness to floor.
Most of the students in the PHY 510: New Physics Teacher Workshop, held July 11-23, were graduate students or high school teachers working toward their master’s degree in physics education; high school science or math teachers who have been asked to teach physics; and physics teachers who want to enhance their students’ understanding of physics.
David Henry, associate professor of elementary education and reading, was the lead instructor for this class; the three other teachers—Walter Pawlowski, Lowell Sylwester, and Laura Dustin—are retired master high school teachers.
“This pedagogy promotes critical thinking and ownership of the material,” said Henry. “We want our students to teach physics in a new and different way.”
Changing the high school physics classroom from a lecture-based pedagogy to an activity-based pedagogy has been the mission and joy of these teachers throughout their careers. “When I taught this way, I saw that kids learned to think things through and form their own game plans,” Pawlowski said.
Uniquely, the course combines standard NYSED Regents physics content with inventive approaches to pedagogy.
As it turns out, the winning team for the "Barbie Bungee Jump" exercise dropped its doll from a height of 2.5 meters and it fell to 23 cm above the floor. “In your classrooms,” Henry told the students, “you would give your students more information and direction, so they only have to calculate one variable.”
Henry and his fellow instructors estimate that about one-third of the physics teachers in New York State have taken this course. C. N. Colon, who teaches at St. Barnabas High School, an all-girls’ school in the Bronx, is joining that number. “I’m a math teacher,” she said, “We needed someone to teach physics, so I volunteered. I believe that the mark of a good physics class is touching it, feeling it, doing it. I’m here to learn the best ways to do that.”
Two additional 6-credit courses make up the rest of this year’s Summer Physics Teacher Academy (held through August 14): Powerful Ideas and Quantitative Modeling in Mechanics and Powerful Ideas and Quantitative Modeling in Electricity and Magnetism.
Related video
Rocket Launch
Puppet shoot
Related story
Physics Professors Mentor Peers
Media Contact:
Mary Durlak, Senior Writer | 7168783517 | durlakma@buffalostate.edu