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Physics Students Turn Home into Science Lab
In their Upper School Advanced Physics classes, teachers George Austin and JP Iaconianni often ask their students to play the role of teacher in assessing their understanding and mastery of new concepts. Recently, they orchestrated one such piece of curriculum remotely, asking students to teach their parents/guardians more about the concept of resonance using layman’s terms and non-technical language.
As a refresher, in physics, resonance describes this phenomenon: 1) an object or system that can vibrate at its natural frequency 2) is driven by an eternal force repeatedly 3) at the same frequency or in rhythm with the natural frequency 4) resulting in a dramatic increase in amplitude of the original object or system. Resonance forms the foundation for understanding the physics of swings, music, MRIs, microwave oven heating, tuning in TV/radio stations and a host of other examples, such as the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.
As a first step in this assignment, students provided a definition of the term in the four parts listed above and three examples. Students demonstrated how each example fit their definition of resonance by highlighting each of the four parts of their definition within each example.
Next, students built a device consisting of three random objects hanging from a rod and practiced with it to demonstrate for their families this “magic” of using only their minds to move only one of the objects (that the audience member chooses) in a dramatic fashion without directly touching it. Then the students broke the “magician’s code” and shared with their families how they achieved this task.
Students then relied on their interpersonal communication skills, understanding of the topic and a range of sample videos to help their parents/guardians better understand the physics principle of resonance using non-technical terms and examples to explain and show the meaning of the technical vocabulary.
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