Week 7 | Physics of Sound and Conferences |#Teach180

The seventh week of school brought with it some school-wide PD and parent-teacher conferences. In all, we only had students for 3.5 days out of 5 but I felt like I was living at the school.

The week started with a 2 hour late start for some staff PD. Tina Boogren from Marzano Research came to talk about student engagement and supporting beginning teachers. While sometimes having mandatory professional development during the week can seem like an unnecessary hoop, having it right away after a long 4-day weekend was really nice. I found that I wasn't so focused on the nitty gritty details of the week yet and I could still reflect and plan on a big picture level.

Goal for the year: help students find the language to self assess their own effort throughout the course

— Joe Cossette (@cossettej) October 19, 2015

#Day28: Late start day for some staff PD on Marzano's Highly Engaged Classroom with @THBoogren #Teach180 pic.twitter.com/KK6IeJK9ms

— Joe Cossette (@cossettej) October 19, 2015

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The Physics Phil-Harmonic

To put sound in action, students had to build instruments and perform a song of their choosing. We've talked about resonance in open and closed tubes so students needed to work backwards from the sheet music to figure out the required notes, their frequencies, and ultimately the length to cut their PVC. The song choices ranged from "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" to "Through the Fire and the Flames" 

#Day29: my classroom was filled with last minute calculations & instrument assembly lines #PhysicsofSound #Teach180 pic.twitter.com/1rOz6seE4L

— Joe Cossette (@cossettej) October 20, 2015

#Day31: some impressive performances during our Physics Phil-Harmonic Coffeehouse Concert #PhysicsofSound #Teach180 pic.twitter.com/sKm8kLYRMM

— Joe Cossette (@cossettej) October 24, 2015

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Measuring the Speed of Sound

I've been wanting to do this demo for a long time. I stood on one end of the parking lot and slapped together a couple of 2 x 4s while students watched from the opposite side of the lot. With their phone stopwatch in hand, students measured the time between seeing the boards connect and when they heard the crack. We used a Google Map Distance Finder to get a rough distance that the sound traveled from source to observer. This distance along with the time, resulted in a speed of sound within 10-25% of the actual value. Ultimately, I would love to take it to the level of Peter Bohacek's Direct Measurement Video and have students use slo mo to calculate a more exact speed of sound but this worked for now.

#Day30: Measured the speed of sound with a couple 2x4s, a long parking lot, and some cellphone stopwatches #Teach180 pic.twitter.com/nla4lHZ4J1

— Joe Cossette (@cossettej) October 22, 2015

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"Beanium" Isotope Lab

#Day31: If beans were an element, how could we analyze the different isotopes? #beanium #Teach180 pic.twitter.com/nvLLnNr3vO

— Joe Cossette (@cossettej) October 24, 2015

It's really hard to visualize concepts in Chemistry like isotopes. How do you explain that there are several types of carbon each with slightly different masses and characteristics. To make this feel a little bit more tangible, we used beans. Students collected a "sample" of their "beanium" isotope and had to analyze and describe it in terms of characteristics and masses.

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Conferences

I always enjoy conference week. It's grueling and I feel like I'm LIVING at the school but I really enjoy talking to  parents. I generally find that conferences feel very positive because the parents that come are usually that ones that have students that are doing just fine. I wish that there was a better way to entice the other parents to come as well...

#Day32: Fall Parent/Teacher Conferences. A gymnasium FULL of teachers to talk to. Dream or nightmare? #Teach180 pic.twitter.com/0jWxsjEoZS

— Joe Cossette (@cossettej) October 24, 2015