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Physics in the Universe! PhUn : Spring Semester 2021

With Master of Engineering! Barton Clark! email: bclark@tamdistrict.org

Spring Semester syllabus: Earth, energy and

Week 1: January 4

New assignments this week.

  • The Wave that Shook the World! Students took one page of 'messy notes' on this film in preparation of next week's discussion. Due Sunday, January10th.
 

 

Week 2: January 11

New assignments this week.

Additional resources:

Discussion: The hunt for a soviet submarine with the Glomar Explorer. (see links at right).

Discussion: Heat flow drives plate tectonics Great video clip of convection in Earth's mantle. Major plates of Earth's crust

Great Earthquakes we'll be examining.

Quick discussion: accoustic sensors used to identify potential tsunamis also useful for "listening for enemy submarines".. History lesson: The Glomar Explorer used to recover Soviet submarine. Manganese nodules

Week 3: Jan 18

New assignments this week.

Additional resources:

(Monday was a holiday: Martin Luther King Jr. Day)

Discussion: 10 minute video: The world before Plate Tectonics. focusing on when plate tectonics actually started and how oceans and life changed as a result.

Discussion: Introduction biogeochemical cycles. We'll focus on the Carbon Cycle specifically.. Worst case scenario: The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum

Discussion: Liquifaction and likelyhood that we will experience it.

Dicussion: Earthquake Preparedness. Phones will be out for days.. who will you call when you can access a phone again? Your house may be unlivable after the quake, where will you go if so?

 

 

Week 4 Jan 25

Review guide for first test! Next Tues/Wed. (to be posted soon).

New assignments this week.

Additional resources:

Video/Discussion: History of Earthquakes in the Bay Area (note: this URL brings students to a SERIES of short video clips.. students are to watch THE FIRST ONE.. about 2.5 minutes long.. for discussion). This video also brings up the risk of fire due to broken gas lines (do you know how to shut off your gas main?) and the effects of liquifaction (hence our discussion last week.. and assignment.. about liquifaction).

TEST NEXT Thurs/Friday! (click here for review guide).

 

Week 4 Jan 25

New assignments this week.

Additional resources:

 

Dicussion: Mountains lifting can remove CO2. (see articles at left).

 

Week 5 Feb 01

Discussion:

 

Discussion of Carbonate minerals vs Silicate minerals vs. Ulramafic ..

(see articles at left for resources).

TEST This Thurs/Friday! (click here for review guide).

 

 

Week 6: Feb 08

New assignments this week.

 

New cars are based on electric motors and computers

CLICK HERE TO JOIN THE CLASS VIA ZOOM!

Discussion: How metals are concentrated by geologic processes into 'ores' which are profitable to mine.

Discussion: Earths continuing process of crustal formation at ocean spreading centers and consumption at subduction zones.(new simulation of Earth's surface over the last 1 billion years).

Discussion: What was the Ordovician Period (described as 'when' the Island Arcs were being formed and accreted off the coast of Australia in the video: Islands of Gold in an ocean of land. (timeline of major periods and Eras of Earth's history). (examples of lfe in the oceans during this time). Also discussed, evolution of teeth (breifly) following discussion in same video of fossilized 'gill rakes/teeth' from ancient fish).

Discussion: Increasing cases of peoples catylitic converters being stolen as theives want to sell them for the rare earth metals they contain.

 

Winter Break

   

Week 8: Feb 22.

New assignments this week.

  • video: PBS Newshour. Turning farmwaste into power. (messy notes).
  • Mini-lab: Up and down. (see assignment descriptor in Canvas). Students climbed a hill and then slid, rode or walked back down. The goal was to determine the work done and the power produced in those 'up and down' actions.

Additional resources:

Dicussion: Polar Vortex. Key ideas include layers of the atmosphere, Jet stream, Polar Vortex and the processes which lead to the Polar Vortex coming futher south

Discussion: Newtons of force and work as a form of energy.

Discussion: What is Power? and Power around the house.

Best examples of Up and Down papers.

 

Week 9: March 01.

New assignments this week.

 

First week of Hyrbid instruction.

Note: From this point forward; Clark will introduce labs in alignment with the associated topics in class, but students will likely 'do them' as part of their 'rotation' through the current, Covid Cohort system.

Dioscussion, New ideas for producing power. A review of Turning farmwaste into power. form last week. The basic idea is that there are 'old ways' to produce power (burning coal and natural gas, for instance) and there are new, GREEN ways to produce power..

Introduction to lab: Heat transfer basics. Specific heat capacity

  

Week 10: March 08.

New assignments this week.

 

Discussion: Solar Power in Puerto Rico is a much better solution than burning Coal.

Introduction to units of power and energy. Note, we've previously discussed Joules and Watts.. today was Kilo-watt-hour.. (which equates to 3.6 million joules).

Class time for students to work on Hot Bolt into Cold Water

Students at home watched How does a standard (nice?) Coal Fueled power plant operate? and took 'messy notes'.

Discussion: Introduction to Solar Panel Physics.. (how semi-conductors work). Fun physics youtube showing construction of a solar cell.

 

Week 11: March 15

Please use THIS link for Monday only (all sections). All students start with Peter Parish during 2nd period. All students spend 4th period with David Gutlfeld. All students spend 3rd period with Barton Clark.

New assignments this week.

Please use THIS LINK for Tues-Fri class meetings.

Review of Best Up and Down Labs (see week 8 for examples)

Introduction to Percent Error Calculation.

Introduction to next lab and 'back story'

 

Week 12: March 22.

No New assignments this week. Students in class continued to do the lab: Cookstove efficiency part 1:

Discussion/examples of solutions for cookstove challenge.

Discussion: Improving the efficiency of combustion is separate from improving efficiency of heat transfer.

Discussion: What is combustion, what does it mean to achieve complete combustion and how do hydrocarbons differ from carbohydrates? Why do both burn so well?

Discussion: Efficient housing design. The Solar Decatholon.

Lecture/introduction to heat transfer: Part 1: Conduction and thermal conductivity.

 

Week 13: March 29.

Handout/Review guide for test after Spring Break (April 15/16).

New assignments this week.

Discussion: Standard Deviation. Students are collecting a series of measured values during this cookstove lab adventure. One of the central elements in collecting and interpretting data, is understanding how 'good' your data is (and to be able to think about how to make it better). Standard deviation is one of the most commonly used strategies to do so.

Discussion (continued). Heat transfer. Convective heat transfer and radiative heat transfer this week.

 
Week 14: April 05    
Week 15: April 12    
Week 16: April 19

Test on Tues/Wed..

Thurs/Fri we watched the first hour of the Science Fiction Film: Moon

  

Week 17: April 26.

 

New assignments this week.

 

Additional resources

Discussion of California Drought.. Worst since early 1800s.. (a review of the book, The West Without Water, which describes California's watershed and rainfall patterns for the last 2000 years.. Main point is; California has a history of enduring droughts which lasted hundreds of years.)..

Finishing the film: Moon.

Thurs/Fri: Introducing the next Unit of the year: An introduction to electricty and magetisim.

Demonstation: Van de Graph Generator.

Discussion/introduction: electricty follows the easiest path.. not quite true. Electrictiy follows ANY path which it can flow through, with the amount of current being determined by resistance of that path. Example shown was http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/31/science/lightning-strike-dead-reindeer.html in which the electric current must have passed through each of the animals IN ADDITION to passing through the ground as the lightning bolt discharged.

 

Awesome footage of lightning strikes

Week 18: May 02.

 

Crazy week: Mon/Tues were 'bonding days'.. so no new content..

Thurs/Fri: Handout: Chapter 32 from Conceptual Physics book (by Paul Hewitt). Introduction to insulators and conductors. Both can become charged! Clark shared stories from industry regarding charged glass fibers being dangerous to handle.

Video/Discussion: Tesla Coils with Dr. Electric!

 

Week 19: May 09.

New assignments this week.

Build a circuit: Part 1. (see description at right). build a circuit including a battery, two lights, a motor and a switch.

Additional resources

 

This week, we built Snap Circuits kits initially, just learning how to assemble the kits.. and then on Tuesday/Thursday.. building defined circuits and learning how to measure voltage and current using multimeters.

Assignment: Build a circuit: Part 1. build a circuit including a battery, two lights, a motor and a switch. Measure the voltage across each circuit 'element' and the current 'through' the the circuit, under the following two conditions. 1st, with the motor spinning freely.. and 2nd.. when someone physically stops the motor (by grabbing it). Students will note that

 

Week 20: May 17.

New assignments this week.

Monday, Clark went over how to solve circuit problems (given an arrangement of resistors and a known battery voltage, students first determined the 'net resistance' of the circuit, then determined the total current, then determine the voltage drop across each circuit element).

Clark was out mid week, and students worked on assignments at left.

Discussion: How to solve circuit problems when resistors are in PARALLEL.

 

Week 21: May 24.

New assignments this week.

Additional resources

Discussion: Fundamentals of how electric currents interact with magnetic fields. First step is to understand how magnetic fields differ from electric fields. When we draw the two, what do the 'arrows' represent? Then, to understand that charged particles experience forces in magnetic fields as described by 'the right hand rule' (according to Clark) or the 'left hand rule'. according to Fleming (as described in this video illustrating 'how electric motors work'. which we began watching around the 9 minute mark.

Discussion: Electric motors and electric generators are fundamnetally 'the same' with the only difference being; in a motor, current flowing through the motor turns a wheel to do some work.. and in a generator, somthing 'external' (such as a windmill) turns the crank, which then generates electric current.

Discussion: How to calculate Resistance from measurements of voltage and current (V= IR is Ohm's law) and how to use a multimeter to measure resistance directly (the circuit element must be removed from the circuit to measure and NEVER MEASURE THE RESISTANCE OF A BATTERY!.. it will fry the circuits of the Ohmmeter (as is the case in many of Clark's multimeters).

 

 

  

Week 22: May 31/June 01.

New assignments this week.

Additional resources

Review guide for final test!

Circuit component discussions:

Just for fun.. disconnecting high voltage transmission lines.. huge arc's form due to induction (the fact that once current starts to flow.. it wants to keep flowing!)

Just for fun: high voltage line repairmen. What a job! (not for Clark!)

 
     
STOP! The items listed in the weeks below are from Last years syllabus. In some instances, dates may be changed and assigments/activities may be repositioned on the calendar as time progresses.
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