danaleeling

For reflection the students measured the object distance of an object from a mirror and the image distance behind the mirror. Mirror tiles that were still present in the laboratory cabinet four years after having been purchased and left behind along with flat decorator marbles for objects provided the equipment for the laboratory. Yard sticks marked in centimeters on one side provided measurements.  Elise sets up for measurements As the students started to make measurements I asked about possible slopes. Suggested slopes of zero, one, and two were offered.  Judah locates the image while Mary measures Sina holds the mirror Renee-Ann-Seshrue and Sue Malia Crystal consider a measurement Recording data I had suggested making at least five measurements, which led to each group making only five measurements.  Mikey suggested that the data he gathered with Elise was probably linear, so that was a starting point for the discussion of the data. The class had settled on d₁ for the ...

Assignments and associated files remains the dominant area of activity on the Canvas platform. Discussions show modest growth as do media recordings, many of these may be set up at term start.  Page views are a proxy for engagement on the platform. Week four is a four day week in the summer session and data for the fourth day is not yet available. Engagement patterns continue to following historic patterns of stronger engagement during the weekdays, greatly reduced engagement on the weekends. Midterm activity may have driven the stronger Monday and Tuesday page view values. Week four is still in progress, but will come in with lower page views per week due to the four day week. Friday is midterm break. Average page views per day indicate stronger engagement earlier in the week, tapering some on Friday. The distribution of current scores for residential courses using Canvas on four of the five campuses. No residential course at Yap campus is using Canvas, hence its absence from the ...

The morning RipStik wave generating run was done this term on the front sidewalk. Conditions were just dry enough. The run had a number of small rocks that had to be cleared first.  Lacking markers, I chose to use the crayons from lab eight.  I colored both wheel tracks as I was not sure which I would use. The cement is smoother here than the sidewalk in Pohnpei, the RipStik wave was not quite as clear.  The paper was laid on the floor - there are no tables long enough to accommodate the 250 cm triple sheet run.  The wavelength was around 70 cm. There were four crests and troughs visible, but the ends of those four waves were clipped. A calculation of 250 ÷70 suggest 3.6 waves were visible on the paper. Amplitude was 5 to 6 centimeters near the middle of the sheets.  The time to cross was 1.86 seconds generating a period of about 0.52 seconds and frequency of 1.94 Hertz. A wave speed of 135 cm/s concurs with 250 cm ÷ 1.86 seconds = 134 cm/s.  The speed of s...

The SC 130 Physical Science class visited the ancient stone city of Leluh to learn about the history of this sacred place and to record some coordinates to look at possible structural alignments later on. For some in the group this was their first visit to the site.  I took a first measurement here at a corner for the end of the tallest wall in the complex. Measurements are in decimal degrees from a Motorola Moto G30 phone, not the most accurate of tools, just what one has. Readings were running off of 13 to 14 satellites. The choice to use decimal degrees was based on the last digit of decimal degrees being roughly 0.6 of the last digit in decimal minutes. In other words, decimal minutes appears to theoretically be able to give positions to within 1.8 meters, decimal degrees to about 1.1 meters. Of course the location error is running much larger at around 3 to 4 meters. One can only hope that while the absolute error is 3 to 4 meters, on a relative basis one might realize the sma...