51–60 of 429 posts
I read this in 1999 when entering university. It was so refreshing hearing a student provide a glimpse into the boots-on-the-ground reality of undergrad life at these world-renowned institution. The closing sentence is also prescient; the author pivoted to CS, ultimately completing his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin at Madison https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~kovar/
One of my Core Memories when it comes to science, science education, and education in general was in my high school physics class, where we had to do an experiment to determine the gravitational acceleration of Earth. This was done via the following mechanism: Roll a ball off of a standard classroom table. Use a 1990s wristwatch's stopwatch mechanism to start the clock when the ball rolls of the table. Stop the stopw…
I was the only person in class that chose to do my own method. And, it didn't work because I didn't account for an environmental difference between my house and the school classroom. And, he gave me a failing grade.
It really killed my interest in physics for a long time. I focused on biology from then through college.
Ultimately, the problem was that he didn't make clear that the only thing that we were being graded on was accuracy, not experimental methods or precision. (My solution was precise, but inaccurate; whereas the standard solution was accurate but imprecise) Also, it's possible everyone else in class knew the culture of the school, and I didn't because it was my first year there. So, I didn't realize that they didn't value creativity in the way I was used to.
Cracks in the Nuclear Model: Surprising Evidence for Structure
One of my Core Memories when it comes to science, science education, and education in general was in my high school physics class, where we had to do an experiment to determine the gravitational acceleration of Earth. This was done via the following mechanism: Roll a ball off of a standard classroom table. Use a 1990s wristwatch's stopwatch mechanism to start the clock when the ball rolls of the table. Stop the stopw…
>Roll a ball off of a standard classroom table. Use a 1990s wristwatch's stopwatch mechanism to start the clock when the ball rolls of the table. Stop the stopwatch when the ball hits the floor. Our class had some kind of device that would either punch a hole, or make a mark on paper at a regular time interval. We attached a narrow strip of paper to the ball, and let it pull through the marking device as it fell from…
One of my Core Memories when it comes to science, science education, and education in general was in my high school physics class, where we had to do an experiment to determine the gravitational acceleration of Earth. This was done via the following mechanism: Roll a ball off of a standard classroom table. Use a 1990s wristwatch's stopwatch mechanism to start the clock when the ball rolls of the table. Stop the stopw…
So did you let this go without protest? Why not escalate it if it was clearly so unreasonable? Sounds like there was more nuance to the story.
One of my Core Memories when it comes to science, science education, and education in general was in my high school physics class, where we had to do an experiment to determine the gravitational acceleration of Earth. This was done via the following mechanism: Roll a ball off of a standard classroom table. Use a 1990s wristwatch's stopwatch mechanism to start the clock when the ball rolls of the table. Stop the stopw…
So did you let this go without protest? Why not escalate it if it was clearly so unreasonable? Sounds like there was more nuance to the story.
Anyone who did undergrad lab work around 2000ish might throw in some comment about lab view software and the number of times it crashes and loses all your data
I’m afraid you’ll have to repeat the experiment.