Today I taught about gravity. I had hoped to teach other things as well, but the units of acceleration - especially the "seconds squared" - took far longer than I anticipated. I eventually assured them that "square seconds" isn't a thing that can be conceptually understood, but that if they figured it out they should let me know.
The discussion of gravity resulted in many of the conceptual issues that "my" (Agnes) students have as well - acceleration and force at the top of a path, a "force" from the throw after the ball has left the hand, etc. I did get some excellent questions during this discussion. One monk asked, after I stressed that all objects fall with an acceleration of g, why smoke rises. I made an attempt, in some very general hand-waving terms, to explain buoyancy. I made analogies to things floating or sinking in water.
My favorite question today was why gravity doesn't affect light. Tsondue and I are using laser pointers, so it was a straight-forward question as to why the laser pointer dot doesn't "fall". I spoke a little bit about light not having mass, but then I talked about General Relativity. Yay! I explained that Einstein theorized that light would get bent by the sun and that this was experimentally verified about 100 years ago.
In the first year class, where they do a survey of multiple physics topics, students are asking a wider range of questions. Apparently they asked about water evaporation, why water sticks together, where water goes when making bread, and what is lightening. After a discussion about water pressure, they asked how deep-water fishes survive. I'm glad I have the easy kinematics questions!
The discussion of gravity resulted in many of the conceptual issues that "my" (Agnes) students have as well - acceleration and force at the top of a path, a "force" from the throw after the ball has left the hand, etc. I did get some excellent questions during this discussion. One monk asked, after I stressed that all objects fall with an acceleration of g, why smoke rises. I made an attempt, in some very general hand-waving terms, to explain buoyancy. I made analogies to things floating or sinking in water.
My favorite question today was why gravity doesn't affect light. Tsondue and I are using laser pointers, so it was a straight-forward question as to why the laser pointer dot doesn't "fall". I spoke a little bit about light not having mass, but then I talked about General Relativity. Yay! I explained that Einstein theorized that light would get bent by the sun and that this was experimentally verified about 100 years ago.
In the first year class, where they do a survey of multiple physics topics, students are asking a wider range of questions. Apparently they asked about water evaporation, why water sticks together, where water goes when making bread, and what is lightening. After a discussion about water pressure, they asked how deep-water fishes survive. I'm glad I have the easy kinematics questions!
No comments:
Post a Comment