I've been trying to integrate as many real-world experiences as possible into class. Curiously, some students really resent this: they believe that math courses are for doing dry problem sets, not analyzing phenomena from the wild. It's an interesting mindset, and breaking the I-we-you routine (see third paragraph) that they expect has proven difficult. We've found a compromise that seems to be working reasonably well, and we've been doing some neat things.
Yesterday we found a way to do the classic sliding ladder problem experimentally. It took a while to get the setup right, but in the end it worked like a charm.
The camera was a little bit too high to see the constant velocity buggy, but I was able to track its motion using the top of the bulls-eye I drew on a piece of paper and attached. The vertical bulls-eye worked like a charm- Tracker's autotracker function is sweet.
Using the x, y, and dx/dt values at t=1.4s predicted a dy/dy of -0.255 m/s Experimentally we got -0.2146 m/s. Not bad for the first go-around.
Stuff I've found useful lately:
Keeping me full of good ideas: Think Thank Thunk
Notes and Organization: OneNote
Graphing: FluidMath (still working on using this more- wish it worked inside OneNote or that OneNote had better math recognition)
Good read: Dan Kennedy
I'll do my best to post more regularly. Hope all is well!
