Representing color

My new favorite representation of color mixing with printer inks.
This explains red light on a red (C+M) strip of paint. It's darker than you would expect, and they explain why.

Below - what they were trying to explain: a picture of red light (laser light) on rainbow stripes of color. The top stripe is red, then orange and yellow, green, cyan, etc. ..... errr, wait. They've explained why the blue is very dark...

Teaching grammar; teaching math

I am pretty sure that the composition faculty could easily explain to the physics faculty why our students can't use math correctly.  And why teaching them math is pretty useless at solving the problem.

A student writes the following in an essay that would place them into an appropriate intro-to-writing class in college:

In the past time I thought that an incident was creative was when I had to make a clay model of the earth, but not of the classical or your everyday model of the earth which consists of the two cores, the mantle and the crust. I thought of these things in a dimension of which it would be unique, but easy to comprehend.

Bartholomae writes, reflecting on this student's writing:

"If the problem of the last sentence is a problem of holding together these units -- "I thought," "dimension," "unique," and "easy to comprehend" -- then the linguistic problem is not a simple matter of sentence construction.

I am arguing, then, that such sentences fall apart not because the writer lacks the necessary syntax to glue the pieces together but because he lacks the full statement within which these key words are already operating."

This is exactly what happens in the use of math in physics, no?

"Give"

Students had to write out in words what happens when you throw a ball - what do you give it? What does it have? Lose? When? Why?

We started with this paragraph:

As I throw a ball, before I release, I am applying energy  by giving a force and velocity to the ball up and to the side, but on the release of the ball I am no longer giving a force to the ball but the energy remains.  Now on earth ,where gravity constantly gives a force and energy downwards to everything.  Back to the ball, since there is no more force or energy  being applied upwards but only downwards, the ball gains energy and downwards. As the energy and velocity going upwards reaches zero, the ball falls back down the earth due to the energy gravity is giving it.

And moved on to this one:

As i am pushing the ball in a forward direction I will also want to throw it into the air to give it the chance to travel a greater distance. Once the ball has left my hand it will then have to fight gravity pulling it down. The ball will slowly lose momentum in it’s upward trajectory and at its highest point, when its upward momentum is no longer able to fight gravity it will begin to fall to the ground at the same rate that it first went up. 

We came up with three ways in which one object can GIVE something to another object:

            I give you a high-five.

I give you money.

I give you a bruise.

In the first, the high-five did not exist before or after the giving; in the second, the money existed before and after - it was transferred in the giving; and in the third, "giving" means "cause to have."  So we tried re-writing our statements by removing "give" and replacing it with either applies, transfers, or causes-to-have.

Here's what we've got so far. Cool, huh?

“I create acceleration when I apply a force  to the ball by pushing it, which transfers some “upwards” energy, and that  (a transfer of energy) means it has motion.”

“Gravity is applying a force to the ball by pulling on it, which transfers energy downwards (and counteracts the energy that we transferred to the ball), and that (transfer of energy) means that it will initially slow it down; once it reaches its peak it will speed it up as it falls back to earth.”

7 questions

We're throwing projectiles in advanced inquiry right now.

There was some conversation about how the ball doesn't have "its own" speed until it leaves your hand. While in your hand, it has speed - but not really because that's just your hand's speed. Then, when it leaves your hand, the ball has its own speed, gravity takes that away then it speeds up again... etc. Others disagreed with this characterization.

I threw the ball and wrote the following questions on the board:

what did I give the ball?
what did the ball get?
when did it get whatever it got?
what does the ball lose?
how does it lose it?
when does it lose it?
where does it go?

answers ranged from force, push, energy, speed, momentum, gravity...

It was a rich conversation and I talked about ontology. We talked about "things I can give but cannot have" (a kiss, a punch, a high-five); "things I have but cannot give" (a memory)... Anyway. Just want to remember those questions for later. Wish I had taped the conversation as students wrestled with "whose" speed is it when a hand is pushing a ball.

Emergent curriculum.

I'm all about Engestrom. The fact that I think about his ideas- in particular, that I am teaching a class where the goals/activities/outcomes (? all ?) of the class will, in part, emerge from our joint activity - means that this framework is useful, right?

Anyway. Today, a group of students took a painted "rainbow" into the closet with two lasers (R & B) to see what they do...

Their video is here:
http://kpokraka.tumblr.com/post/42877401716/red-and-blue-laser-on-different-colors

I would never have thought to do that. It's gorgeous. They couldn't find the green laser, aren't sure what it means, some things are surprising to them (blue laser on blue paint), some aren't (both lasers on brown paint), some highlight cool things (lots of red in one end of the spectrum...)

I love it.  I want to print up a CMYK printer version of these colors and have them repeat with green and then send a paper to TPT.

Colorado Science Standards

I was searching through files trying to find NGSS on energy and this popped up. At first I was horrified that it was part of the NGSS, but no- it's the 8th grade "competencies" for Colorado physical science:

1. Which forms of energy can be directly observed, and which forms of energy must be inferred? (None and all?)
2. What evidence supports the existence of potential and kinetic energy? (It's useful to believe in energy?)
3. Is there a limit to how many times energy can be transferred? Explain your answer. (I'm still trying to figure that out!)

Lordy.