danaleeling

Laboratory fifteen in physical science sought to push the boundaries on the mathematical box for the students. In laboratory one a quote from Freeman Dyson was used to start a journey through the mathematical models that explain physical systems. Dyson calculated how an electron ought to behave. Later someone went into a laboratory and the electron behaved as predicted by the mathematical model. Salinta In laboratory two a linear model predicted the location of a rolling ball. In laboratory three a falling ball obeyed a quadratic mathematical relationship. The behavior of a marble rolling off of a banana leaf obeyed a square root relationship. And in laboratory four the marbles knew what to do in order to mathematically conserve momentum. Sound relative depth of an image Ohm's law all exhibited linear relationships. Sucyang There are other mathematical relationships that govern physical systems. There are systems that are modeled by exponential and logarithmic ...

Laboratory thirteen in physical science had the students collect flowers from around campus, produce floral solutions by boiling in water, and then test to see which floral solutions changed color for both a known acid and a known base. The ideal flower is one that turns different distinct colors from the original floral solution color for both acids and bases. A less ideal situation is in which one floral solution changes in a distinct way only for acids while another floral solution changes only for bases. Jeremy, Tracy, Joyleen The laboratory uses a variety of local key limes as the known acid. Baking soda is the known base. Summer term is a quick run from proton and electrons, hydrogen to oxygen, and then the structure of hydrogen and hydronium ions, providing an attempt at a seque into this laboratory. This material always reminds me that physical science is a bizarre course, an assembled beast that has way too much material in it. Lewis and Jeremy Flowers that...

The day began with a new feature in the A204 mathematics and science computer laboratory. The draperies had been completed. The room can now be essentially blacked out for movies and SMART board displays. When the lights go out, the room goes about as dark as one can get a room given the blazing tropical sun. The MS 101 students put up with their crazy old professor turning off the lights to take a picture in the dark. A team from the USS Cleveland played Madolehnihmw. In the first inning Madolehnihmw lofted a couple homers over Spanish wall, the Navy went three up and three down. By the time I wandered off with the two-year old in search of Fourth of July hot dogs, the score was 20 to 6 in favor of Madolehnihmw. I later heard Madolehnihmw extended their lead to 28 to 6. The two-year old and I scored on the hot dogs - free hot dogs provided courtesy of the US Embassy served up by embassy staff. Cranking out a serious number of hot dogs. I sure wish I knew how many...

The A building now has a back-up generator due to the unreliability of island power. A lack of maintenance and any sort of plan for overhauling or replacing generators on the island - other than waiting for foreign nations to donate generators - has led to the island being powered by a single generator. The other five have either been cannibalized or have failed beyond repair. Although the new generator will eventually be fully enclosed, that has not yet occurred. The generator is quiet enough that I could lecture next to it, and this provided an opportunity to introduce electricity this summer term.  Running at 62 Hertz  Voltage at 200 volts, possibly peak rather than root mean square? Delivering about 45 amps, up from 28 amps earlier in the day. The air conditioners pull more and more power as the day steadily heats up.  Not sure, possibly the power output in Watts, but I cannot work the other numbers to produce this result.  Nayleen experiments with higher vo...

Laboratory eleven was trimmed to focus only on the apparent depth of an object below the surface of the water.      Lavanaleen, Jeremy, and Lewis   This modification was made in part because the morning lecture combined pinhole cameras and lenses. The focus had been on the bending of light due to refraction. Mirrors just seemed like too much of an add-on that would distract and confuse from the core concept.     Jackleen   Summer is fast and furious, the course is moving at three regular term weeks per one summer week. Huge amounts of material are being explored by the students.   Merseny This summer the class is not using the A204 computer laboratory. I required students to bring a scientific calculator to class. One student has a lap top computer.   Nayleen   Arthur and Raynard   Salinta, Joyleen, and Tracy Joyleen and Tracy

My morning commute is not exactly high stress rush hour driving on smog-filled, twelve lane wide slabs of concrete surrounded by dingy and decaying metropolitan infrastructure. My morning commute is an oxygen filled rush through an insanely humid, lush, tropical landscape. Of course the infrastructure here also decays and rather suddenly. Come around a corner a tad too fast and you might not be able to stop in time to avoid the decayed infrastructure or a roll-over accident in the road. Beach hibiscus tree tends to roll with time. Like a slow motion tumbleweed. Sometimes into the road. Twenty-four hours after the first photo taken over my hood, at that same location, a Hibiscus tiliaceus tree had rolled, or fallen - your choice - into the road. Note the Acalypha wilkesiana (copper leaf) shrub on the right in both images. As another driver coming in from Kitti remarked, " Udahn kohlo !"

With no access to the computer laboratory for laboratory ten, I opted to focus on spectra. Summer 2010 I built the laboratory off of a morning lecture on colors,  color vision , color blindness  ,  achromatopsia ,  color constancy ,  retinex  and  GIMP . This summer the delayed start put laboratory ten on the Tuesday behind midterm and after the DVD Inconvenient Truth was shown to the class on Monday. This meant that I had to cover the midterm and lab hand-back notes along with spectrum material. So I dropped the color material and focused on the electromagnetic spectrum.  Lavanaleen and Arthur examine the spectrum of hydrogen In the laboratory session the students worked with  CD-ROM based spectroscopes . The class had six to work with. I built one in class so the students could see the construction process.  After viewing the continuous spectra of the sun, I dug out a box of old spectrum tubes and a spectrum tube power supply also...