Brainstorming Physics Inquiry

1. Brainstorming Physics Inquiry Redwood Firecaster LeOnardO Kingmaker Tribble Solo Khristen Kerr, Paul Borst, & Leo Esnes Empire State College February 17, 2010

3. Explore new things

5. The Hook Raise students curiosity by presenting relatable phenomenon that promotes keen observations that can be acted upon in the lab and discussion Students ride the bus to school everyday – Concepts like velocity, acceleration, and momentum are events that students have directly experienced and therefore already have a physical understanding of

6. Competitive games The famous physics egg drop promotes creativity, problem solving skills, experimentation, discussion, competition, curiosity, data gathering, collaboration, safety, consequences, and questions

7. New things The fact that all things in a gravity field fall at the same rate in a vacuum is not obvious, experiencing new things can be counter intuitive to our experiences Simple demonstrations in class like allowing a feather to fall in the wake of a book can dramatically eliminate the drag of air friction and can offer up many interesting discussions on how to model this behavior

8. Questions Raising questions like what would happen if, stimulates students to take what they know and apply it to a wide range of possibilities Visually intriguing questions allow students to surmise contingencies and put forward proposals long before any equation is composed and calculated

9. Physics history Understanding takes time, effort, and reflection - Knowing how the giants of physics think help us to think about how we did think, currently think, might think, can think, or could think Metacognition - That's a lot to think about

10. In conclusion We know through research that students want to learn and that they want to be challenged Lecturing to a student is passive and does not allow students to actively participate in discovering the truth Understanding comes from fun, lively, and engaged exploration of the world we live in

12. Paul Borst – Redwood Firecaster