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professor_pat
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« Reply #1980 on: November 14, 2009, 10:42:14 AM » |
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Loved the bipolar thing, G_H!
Another student conversation; this one's not remarkable for its content as much as for the fact that I get this question almost once a day in this EXACT same form. One day last week I had it three times with three different students, verbatim:
STUDENT [urgent, concerned look on face]: Did you get my email?
ME: About what? I've received several emails from you recently.
STUDENT: About [whatever].
ME: Yes, and I wrote you right back.
STUDENT: Oh, I haven't checked my email all day.
Rinse and repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat and ....
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« Last Edit: November 14, 2009, 10:44:26 AM by professor_pat »
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To me, forums are more of a relaxing period in which the poster can allow himself or himself to be lost in a sea of wonder.
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polly_mer
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« Reply #1981 on: November 14, 2009, 10:50:50 AM » |
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Of all the topics that we will cover, magnetism is the most difficult to learn from a book or lecture and is the one for which the fewest students will have had adequate daily life exposure. So today, I handed out magnets, compasses, paper clips, nails, and worksheets with instructions on what to do with those things to get more physical intuition about how magnets work. In addition, I went from table to table so that I could demonstrate some particularly cool things that I know students wouldn't try if I didn't stand over them in small enough groups that everyone would touch the demos and actually experience what I was attempting to show. FYI, if you've never rubbed together two refrigerator magnets, tried to put together the two pieces of a magnet broken catty corner to the original poles, or gotten to experience strong magnetic repulsion, then your education is incomplete.
Like Concordania, I did this stuff in primary school. Oh, we didn't do it in school, we did it at home. In the lower middle class neighborhood. The kind that people my own age now argue wasn't even middle class because we only had one bathroom. Back in the day when same gendered children were forced to share bedrooms. And I really did have to walk up hill both ways because school was on the other side of the hill. As a matter of fact, I still have to walk uphill both ways to one of my classes for the same reason. Well, I, too, grew up that way and yes, I did walk up hill both way in waist deep snow for the same reason. When it finally snows here, I will still be walking uphill both ways in waist deep snow to get to school from a house that technically has two bathrooms, if you count a toilet separated from the kitchen by a flimsy privacy panel as a bathroom. |
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You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part. A portion of wisdom lies in knowing this. A portion of courage lies in going on anyway.
--Robert Jordan
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concordancia
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« Reply #1982 on: November 14, 2009, 10:53:49 AM » |
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Of all the topics that we will cover, magnetism is the most difficult to learn from a book or lecture and is the one for which the fewest students will have had adequate daily life exposure. So today, I handed out magnets, compasses, paper clips, nails, and worksheets with instructions on what to do with those things to get more physical intuition about how magnets work. In addition, I went from table to table so that I could demonstrate some particularly cool things that I know students wouldn't try if I didn't stand over them in small enough groups that everyone would touch the demos and actually experience what I was attempting to show. FYI, if you've never rubbed together two refrigerator magnets, tried to put together the two pieces of a magnet broken catty corner to the original poles, or gotten to experience strong magnetic repulsion, then your education is incomplete.
Like Concordania, I did this stuff in primary school. |
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I like money. I like to buy stuff and experiences with money.
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marigolds
looks far too young to be a
Distinguished Senior Member
Posts: 6,270
if it ain't ruff it ain't me
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« Reply #1983 on: November 14, 2009, 02:46:10 PM » |
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Of all the topics that we will cover, magnetism is the most difficult to learn from a book or lecture and is the one for which the fewest students will have had adequate daily life exposure. So today, I handed out magnets, compasses, paper clips, nails, and worksheets with instructions on what to do with those things to get more physical intuition about how magnets work. In addition, I went from table to table so that I could demonstrate some particularly cool things that I know students wouldn't try if I didn't stand over them in small enough groups that everyone would touch the demos and actually experience what I was attempting to show. FYI, if you've never rubbed together two refrigerator magnets, tried to put together the two pieces of a magnet broken catty corner to the original poles, or gotten to experience strong magnetic repulsion, then your education is incomplete.
Like Concordania, I did this stuff in primary school. Oh, we didn't do it in school, we did it at home. In the lower middle class neighborhood. The kind that people my own age now argue wasn't even middle class because we only had one bathroom. Back in the day when same gendered children were forced to share bedrooms. And I really did have to walk up hill both ways because school was on the other side of the hill. As a matter of fact, I still have to walk uphill both ways to one of my classes for the same reason. Shoot. We live in a one-bathroom house right now, and if we have another seedling, Sprout will share his room with it - there's no where else to put any more kids! And we grew up playing with magnets at home too. It makes me really sad that those students didn't - how fun! Sprout is spoiled rotten, but his Thomas trains have magnets on each end, and that's his favorite part, so I can salve my conscience with that. (And with the fact that I wouldn't have a Tickle Me Elmo in the house if you paid me.) |
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"You and your mom are hillbillies. This is a house of learned doctors."
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llanfair
Village idiot and Very
Distinguished Senior Member
Posts: 22,189
Whither Canada?
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« Reply #1984 on: November 14, 2009, 03:42:21 PM » |
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We had all sorts of good stuff, mostly because my father was an electrical engineer and my brother was in love with Meccano and How Things Work (great book). Add to that the fact that I was a tomboy and you have one interesting household (and you get to play with wires and horns and magnets and ... ).
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Because, you know, that stuff on the syllabus is like, in writing, and there are so many ways you can, like, read that, but when the guys who sit by you in class, like, you know, must know what's really going on, right? -- AmLitHist, channelling student
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mystictechgal
Happy in my "full, rich adulthood", and as a
Member-Moderator
Distinguished Senior Member
Posts: 9,399
One step at a time
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« Reply #1985 on: November 14, 2009, 05:08:22 PM » |
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I love playing with magnets. I can't imagine any one growing up without playing with magnets. Of course, when I grew up we used to play with the mercury after a thermometer broke, too. Good times. Maybe that explains a few things. ;)
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If a pouting pluot ploughman planted pluots in a plot, and the plot were ploughed on Pluto, would his pluot ploy play out?
"Is all the same, only different" -- Dr. H. L. |
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llanfair
Village idiot and Very
Distinguished Senior Member
Posts: 22,189
Whither Canada?
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« Reply #1986 on: November 14, 2009, 08:44:30 PM » |
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I love playing with magnets. I can't imagine any one growing up without playing with magnets. Of course, when I grew up we used to play with the mercury after a thermometer broke, too. Good times. Maybe that explains a few things. ;)
Sounds like the free-range kids website we were introduced to yesterday - can't remember which thread. Basically arguing that we did all sorts of things kids are never allowed to do now, and we survived. |
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Because, you know, that stuff on the syllabus is like, in writing, and there are so many ways you can, like, read that, but when the guys who sit by you in class, like, you know, must know what's really going on, right? -- AmLitHist, channelling student
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gennimom
Somewhat Southern (Have I really posted that much?)
Distinguished Senior Member
Posts: 16,764
Let's get summer over with! Me want snow!
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« Reply #1987 on: November 14, 2009, 09:04:38 PM » |
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Well, Polly, there may be a light at the end of the tunnel for us per your students. Instead of a shortage of teachers, there now appears to be a glut. Hopefully, schools will chose teachers who know what they are doing instead of people only appear to do it because it seems easy, when the schools DO actually have positions open. So maybe that means your future teachers will have to do something else (hopefully less damaging) for a living?
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...only after reading gm's post, my new mantra is "always listen to gennimom".
Monday reeks! - Garfield The outside of a horse is good for the inside of a person (or something like that). |
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chemystery
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« Reply #1988 on: November 15, 2009, 04:08:49 AM » |
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I love playing with magnets. I can't imagine any one growing up without playing with magnets. Of course, when I grew up we used to play with the mercury after a thermometer broke, too. Good times. Maybe that explains a few things. ;)
I had a startling revelation this year. A student reported finding a broken thermometer, so I asked if it was one of our mercury or alcohol thermometers. This makes a huge difference in clean up procedures. Student's response was "How can I tell?" I am now getting students who, prior to signing up for my lab, have never seen a mercury thermometer. This was a very responsible student who had cleaned up the drawer the thermometer had broken in before alerting me. That would have been great, except it was, indeed, a mercury thermometer and now several more areas had to be decontaminated. I think I have no choice but to start including a "how to recognize a mercury thermometer" lecture the first time we use them. I'm filing this under "Ways my students manage to make me feel old" even though this one is something I would have never seen coming. |
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"Nolite te bastardes carborundorum"
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cc_alan
is a wossname
Distinguished Senior Member
Posts: 6,885
Caution! Nekkid zamboni driver ahead.
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« Reply #1989 on: November 15, 2009, 11:57:19 AM » |
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I love playing with magnets. I can't imagine any one growing up without playing with magnets. Of course, when I grew up we used to play with the mercury after a thermometer broke, too. Good times. Maybe that explains a few things. ;)
I had a startling revelation this year. A student reported finding a broken thermometer, so I asked if it was one of our mercury or alcohol thermometers. This makes a huge difference in clean up procedures. Student's response was "How can I tell?" I am now getting students who, prior to signing up for my lab, have never seen a mercury thermometer. This was a very responsible student who had cleaned up the drawer the thermometer had broken in before alerting me. That would have been great, except it was, indeed, a mercury thermometer and now several more areas had to be decontaminated. I think I have no choice but to start including a "how to recognize a mercury thermometer" lecture the first time we use them. I'm filing this under "Ways my students manage to make me feel old" even though this one is something I would have never seen coming. We now use a combination of alcohol thermometers and temperature probes instead of mercury thermometers. As far as I know, the only mercury we have in the lab is the barometer. I remember the first time I just a mercury vacuum instead of the sponge (I hated those mercury sponges). Here I thought I was going to use some little hand-held device when they wheeled in the modified ginormous wet-vac. Alan |
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Excuse me... which aisle would I find the unicorns and rainbows? No, Alan is a man among men, striding the Earth like a Colossus with a really big bladder, wearing a tool belt.
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barred_owl
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« Reply #1990 on: November 15, 2009, 12:09:33 PM » |
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I love playing with magnets. I can't imagine any one growing up without playing with magnets. Of course, when I grew up we used to play with the mercury after a thermometer broke, too. Good times. Maybe that explains a few things. ;)
I had a startling revelation this year. A student reported finding a broken thermometer, so I asked if it was one of our mercury or alcohol thermometers. This makes a huge difference in clean up procedures. Student's response was "How can I tell?" I am now getting students who, prior to signing up for my lab, have never seen a mercury thermometer. This was a very responsible student who had cleaned up the drawer the thermometer had broken in before alerting me. That would have been great, except it was, indeed, a mercury thermometer and now several more areas had to be decontaminated. I think I have no choice but to start including a "how to recognize a mercury thermometer" lecture the first time we use them. I'm filing this under "Ways my students manage to make me feel old" even though this one is something I would have never seen coming. We now use a combination of alcohol thermometers and temperature probes instead of mercury thermometers. As far as I know, the only mercury we have in the lab is the barometer. I remember the first time I just a mercury vacuum instead of the sponge (I hated those mercury sponges). Here I thought I was going to use some little hand-held device when they wheeled in the modified ginormous wet-vac.Alan Would that be the Zambartini modified ginormous wet-vac, Alan? My husband recounts the days he spent playing with droplets of mercury that he and his buddies found inside a culvert that handled outflow from a water plant in Saginaw Bay, Michigan. Good times, huh? On some days, this little peek into hubby's past explains a lot... RE: magnets. I used to love those toys that contained the iron filings and a little magnet to "draw a beard" on the funny face. My magnetic wand skills were impressive! |
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...I can't help rooting for the underdog underbird. |
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galactic_hedgehog
Procrastinating, Python-quoting, Blue Blazer-drinking, chocolate-chip cookie-eating, Pastafarian, Not So
Distinguished Senior Member
Posts: 17,915
Mind Ninja
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« Reply #1991 on: November 15, 2009, 01:16:38 PM » |
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When I was a wee lad (I don't remember exactly how old) I was sick in bed, with a thermometer in my mouth. While waiting for the time to be up, I looked over and saw the vaporizer going, shooting a cloud of steam at me. Being a budding science nerd, I wondered how hot the steam was. When my temperature reading was done, I took the thermometer and stuck it into the steam. The end of the bulb promptly fell off, and these really cool metal droplet came out, onto the carpet. It was really neat how they didn't soak in and how I could get them to coalesce.
Fun times.
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"A pun is primâ facie an insult to the person you are talking with. It implies utter indifference to or sublime contempt for his remarks, no matter how serious." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Hedgie loves to read. |
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science_expat
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« Reply #1992 on: November 15, 2009, 01:43:17 PM » |
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I too remember playing with mercury.
As GH says, fun times.
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Professor of Something Scarily Scientific Sounding
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cc_alan
is a wossname
Distinguished Senior Member
Posts: 6,885
Caution! Nekkid zamboni driver ahead.
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« Reply #1993 on: November 15, 2009, 02:08:30 PM » |
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Would that be the Zambartini modified ginormous wet-vac, Alan?
<snicker> I can picture it... "Back away, everyone! The professor needs room to drive the mercury vacuum in-between the lab benches." I never played with mercury as a kid but I do have memories of playing with iron filings that I pulled out of sand/dirt/whatever using a fridge magnet. Alan |
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Excuse me... which aisle would I find the unicorns and rainbows? No, Alan is a man among men, striding the Earth like a Colossus with a really big bladder, wearing a tool belt.
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galactic_hedgehog
Procrastinating, Python-quoting, Blue Blazer-drinking, chocolate-chip cookie-eating, Pastafarian, Not So
Distinguished Senior Member
Posts: 17,915
Mind Ninja
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« Reply #1994 on: November 15, 2009, 02:10:40 PM » |
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You didn't try to pick up mercury droplets with a magnet?
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"A pun is primâ facie an insult to the person you are talking with. It implies utter indifference to or sublime contempt for his remarks, no matter how serious." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Hedgie loves to read. |
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