FizziksGuy

[ATTACH=CONFIG]121[/ATTACH]The first APlusPhysics course guide book, APlusPhysics: Your Guide to Regents Physics Essentials, will be available in late April through direct order as well as major book retailers such as Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. From the book's description: APlusPhysics: Your Guide to Regents Physics Essentials by Dan Fullerton is a clear and concise roadmap to the entire New York State Regents Physics curriculum, preparing students for success in their high school physics class as well as review for high marks on the Regents Physics Exam. Topics covered include pre-requisite math and trigonometry; kinematics; forces; Newton's Laws of Motion, circular motion and gravity; impulse and momentum; work, energy, and power; electrostatics; electric circuits; magnetism; waves; optics; and modern physics. Featuring more than four hundred questions with worked out solutions and detailed illustrations, this book is integrated with the APlusPhysics website, which includes online question and answer forums, videos, animations, and supplemental problems to help you master Regents Physics essentials. Advance Praise for APlusPhysics Regents Physics Essentials: "Very well written... simple, clear engaging and accessible. You hit a grand slam with this review book." -- Anthony, NY Regents Physics Teacher. "Does a great job giving students what they need to know. The value provided is amazing." -- Tom, NY Regents Physics Teacher. "This was tremendous preparation for my physics test. I love the detailed problem solutions." -- Jenny, NY Regents Physics Student. For more information about the book, advance orders, and volume purchasing, please contact Sales@SillyBeagle.com

Sure... tell us more about the problem, but in general, the easiest way to complete a combination circuit is to find the equivalent resistance for all of your resistors in parallel, and simplify the circuit with equivalent resistances until it looks like a basic series circuit. Then, you can find the current flow and voltage drops across the various parts of the circuit, which will then help you fill in your original, more complex circuit.

Dr. Ben Kilminster, head of the Higgs Boson project at Fermilab, visited us last year and was interviewed about his work as part of the Physics in Action podcast. Check it out! http://www.aplusphysics.com/podcasts/PIA/PIA_Ep012_FHockeyKilm.m4v

Great Introduction from Electromagnetism to Modern Physics! http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/fermi-thunderstorms.html

Hmmm, not able to take a look as I don't have a NY Times login... perhaps we can find this somewhere else.

Very cool -- yes. And gotta love her duds... but this is another Moog Music April Fool's joke: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/04/polyphonic-theremin/

Great insight into the physics of the sweet spot and waves... not so sure about the Yankees pitching this year, though...

Some of those look pretty painful!

Wow, never thought my MacGyver Magnetostriction video would gain an audience! Now to put a video together on superconducting magnetic levitation...

See forum post: http://www.aplusphysics.com/forums/showthread.php?185-Web-Assign-Electric-Potential&p=319&posted=1#post319

Hope this helps... [ATTACH=CONFIG]102[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]103[/ATTACH]

Nice synopsis... isn't it amazing how writing about what you've learned forces you to really organize and understand?

Whew! It’s been a long and challenging project, but I am thrilled to announce that the APlusPhysics.com Regents Physics course tutorial has been completed (well, at least the first revision). I’ve been done with the tutorial less than 20 minutes, and already I’m making notes on additions, modifications, and enhancements, but I think it’s worth taking a moment to step back and look at everything that’s been accomplished. [ATTACH=CONFIG]96[/ATTACH] A year ago I had never created a web page, and didn’t know the difference between HTML and ELMO. But, with a vision to create a resource specific to the needs of the students I see every day, and with the support of friends and family, I started picking up books, reading web articles, and making many, many designs on paper to script out what I wanted to build. As of this morning, with the upload of a question bank of more than 500 Regents Physics questions from past years, I’m amazed at how much has been created. The APlusPhysics Regents Tutorials include objectives, explanations, sample problems, FLASH animations, integrated quizzes, videos… just about everything you could ask for in an online resource tailored to a specific course. Further, as the projected progressed, I began to see potential for this resource being used outside my classroom and even outside the scope of NY’s Regents curriculum, and have begun building in further topics of interest to many introductory physics students. Even better, I learned the Regents Physics material better than I could have ever imagined (there’s nothing like digging through 10 years of old exams to help you really learn a course inside and out). I wanted this website to be an original work, so not only did I learn webpage design, I also had to learn vector and bitmap graphics, flash animation, basic flash programming, and even a little bit of PHP to make everything work in the background. For an artistically-challenged science guy, I’m pretty amazed with the quality of illustrations I was able to create after reading a few books on the modern tools available! In support of the static web tutorials, the site also features a discussion forum based on the latest version of vBulletin, integrated student and educator blogs, course notes, calendars, project activities, and even hosting for old episodes of the Physics in Action Podcast. So what’s next? I’ve said from the beginning I want to follow up the Regents Physics tutorials with the AP-1 and AP-2 curricula, but with delays from the College Board, we’re all still waiting to find out exactly what those courses will entail (and to what depth). I have been considering creating a tutorial for AP-C physics, but I’m not certain I see as great a need for such a site, as the AP-C course mirrors many introductory university physics courses, and that material is already widely available throughout the web. With these challenges in mind, I think I’m on hold for creating static tutorial pages for the time being. This feels like a blessing in disguise, however, as I’ve been quite excited to dive into several other projects. First, I want to expand the build out the Semiconductor Technology Enrichment Program (STEP), a program designed to take the weeks in class after the AP Physics exams and introduce students to basic semiconductor physics and micro/nano technology. Second, I need to spend time planning on the details of the Skills Based Grading (SBG) program I’m planning on implementing in my Regents Physics courses next year. Third, I’d like to continue my work to pre-record video lessons of all the major topics in the Regents Physics course, with the ultimate goal of spending in-class time working on hands-on lab activities, as well as supporting students individually and in small groups, and minimizing the less-effective entire-class-instruction time. Finally, several students have inquired as to whether I might take the course content material on APlusPhysics and expand it into a written mini-book / synopsis for the Regents Physics course. Though initially hesitant, the more I think about it, the more I find value in creation of the written “APlusPhysics’s Guide to Regents Physics.” And oh, by the way, did I mention the list of website enhancements I’ve already started on? The question, then, is where to start. I oftentimes prioritize items both by “bang for the buck” as well as cost to implement. SBG work will largely occur in late spring and early summer due to some outside interests and external timing constraints. The STEP program may find some external funding in a month or so, and if I can get paid to work on something, why not wait until there’s a bit of income for my time? That really leaves the printed physics guidebook, video mini-lessons, and website revisions. As much as I try to deny it, I know I’ll be working on website revisions by tonight, in tandem with my next project. So which to tackle next, the video mini-lessons, or the printed guidebook? Or both? Would love to hear your feedback and thoughts! And, as with any endeavor of such scale, allow me to again thank all my supporters, colleagues, family members and contributors. This is a huge milestone for APlusPhysics and the culmination of hundreds of hours of frustration and effort, which has already paid for itself in learning and confidence. I’ve come out all the better for it, and I hope this resource helps others say the same.

That is an excellent reaction time... just remember when doing your calculations that you need to convert 3.5 feet to meters first! (3.5 feet = 1.07m) Or, to be more accurate, since the box only fell about 2.5 feet, the displacement of the box was closer to 0.76m. Now how fast was your reaction time? :egg)

Outstanding point. eBay here I come!

And all for the amazingly low price of only $500!!! http://www.instrumentpro.com/P-MOOETPLUS?source=CJ&AID=10362375&PID=1095380

Almost like you knew what you were doing... I hope you'll continue to give him a bit of a hard time about this! :wave)

From New Scientist Magazine A BALL spinning in a vacuum should never slow down, since no outside forces are acting on it. At least that's what Newton would have said. But what if the vacuum itself creates a type of friction that puts the brakes on spinning objects? The effect, which might soon be detectable, could act on interstellar dust grains. In quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle says we can never be sure that an apparent vacuum is truly empty. Instead, space is fizzing with photons that are constantly popping into and out of existence before they can be measured directly. Even though they appear only fleetingly, these "virtual" photons exert the same electromagnetic forces on the objects they encounter as normal photons do. Now, Alejandro Manjavacas and F. Javier García de Abajo of the Institute of Optics at the Spanish National Research Council in Madrid say these forces should slow down spinning objects. Just as a head-on collision packs a bigger punch than a tap between two cars one behind the other, a virtual photon hitting an object in the direction opposite to its spin collides with greater force than if it hits in the same direction. So over time, a spinning object will gradually slow down, even if equal numbers of virtual photons bombard it from all sides. The rotational energy it loses is then emitted as real, detectable photons (Physical Review A, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.82.063827). The strength of the effect depends on the object's make-up and size. Objects whose electronic properties prevent them from easily absorbing electromagnetic waves, such as gold, may decelerate little or not at all. But small, low-density particles, which have less rotational momentum, slow down dramatically. The rate of deceleration also depends on temperature, since the hotter it is the more virtual photons pop in and out of existence, producing the friction. At room temperature, a 100-nanometre-wide grain of graphite, the kind that is abundant in interstellar dust, would take about 10 years to slow to about one-third of its initial speed. At 700 °C, an average temperature for hot areas of the universe, that same speed decrease would take only 90 days. In the cold of interstellar space, it would take 2.7 million years. Could this effect be tested in the lab? Manjavacas says the experiment would require an ultra-high vacuum and high-precision lasers to trap the nanoparticles, conditions that are "demanding but reachable in the foreseeable future". John Pendry of Imperial College in London calls the analysis a "fine piece of work" and says it could provide insights into whether quantum information is ever destroyed, for example, when it falls into a black hole. He says the real photons emitted during the deceleration process should contain information about the quantum state of the spinning particle, much as the photons thought to escape from black holes as Hawking radiation are thought to encode information about the holes. "This is one of the few elementary processes that converts what appears to be purely classical mechanical energy into a highly correlated quantum state," Pendry says. Read full article here...

My goodness. That much energy would power an awful lot of Tickle-Me-Elmo's!

I'll see if I can't find a way to "Sticky" a link to this post... another you can do is treat it as a "group" blog, where more than one person can write/edit/post to it. I believe you can play with the settings from the top navigation bar where it says "blog settings." I'll do a bit more research, but I know that capability comes with our blogging/messaging software. Just as an aside, I can't begin to tell you guys how thrilled I am with the effort and thought you're putting in to your posts. Not only are you finding fun and unique physics applications, you're also building tools to help yourselves and the many students who will come after you. Well done!

I am absolutely amazed... this is tremendous!!!

Great physics demos notwithstanding, it was a very entertaining game... even for a Steelers fan painfully observing his team find new and exciting ways to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Anyone who can prove Santa is real with physics must know their stuff!

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