edu180atl: john burk 4.27.11
Physics. It's a word that makes most students (and adults cringe). Often when people find out I teach the subject, they share stories of their horrible experiences with the subject—hours spent trying to decipher complicated formulae and absorb ideas from incomprehensible lectures. But it's never been that way for me—when I look at physics, I don't see equations—I see symmetry, beauty and an endless chain of questions. My greatest challenge as a teacher has been to change the way the world sees science, one student and one question at a time.
For many of my students, visualizing physics turns out to be one of the biggest difficulties, since the motion of objects, from planets to baseballs, is governed by forces they can't see. Recently, thanks to the power of technology, I've found what might be a tremendous breakthrough in overcoming this difficulty. Students in my classes are learning to program interactive 3-d simulations of situations in a programming language, VPython. They can then interact with these simulations, and see how the velocity or net force change as the objects moves. You can see an example of this above in the movie simulating the elliptical motion of a comet around the sun.
I came to discover this tool through another technological wonder—the Global Physics Department—a weekly collaboration of over 20 physics teachers from around the world that get together on Wednesday nights to chat via elluminate and share ideas about physics teaching. The power of technology to allow us to visualize and build global collaborations might just be the key to taking the fear out of physics.
About the author: John Burk is a physics teacher and new father with more questions than answers.
