Demonstrations In Your Physics Class

I work with faculty organizing and planning demonstrations for the courses they teach, in addition to those courses that I teach. I find that faculty come in two flavors, seemingly much less complicated than quarks, but that is not the case. Faculty either like to do demos (Chocolate), or they don’t (Liver). Each come in two colors: good at doing them (Orange), or bad at doing them (Carolina Blue). There are more, but for this workshop, we’ll just focus on these 4 distinct types.

During this workshop, you will see some of my favorite demos, some which are listed in the PIRA200, which we’ll touch on, and others are just plain cool. We can talk about proper presentation of demonstrations so students can make maximal learning gains from that precious use of class time. We can
also discuss things that can go wrong and how to enhance certain demos. No matter which flavor and color you are, I hope to convince you to oscillate to chocolate-orange. (Ok, maybe chocolate-orange isn’t the best combination, but I couldn’t figure out how work to peanut butter into this...)

Facilitator: Sam Sampere (Syracuse University)

• Link to slides from presentation