[Edu-sig] seasonal challenge to calculator dominance in high schools

[Wes Turner]

On Sunday, June 23, 2019, C. Cossé <ccosse at gmail.com> wrote:

> Ahh, that's a good point!  But the whole problem can be worked-out from
> scratch, in front of them in one hour if you're fast.
>

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method

Just don't hold up a finger when you've solved it and you should be fine.


>
> On Sun, Jun 23, 2019 at 12:14 PM Wes Turner <wes.turner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> > It would be a good team-teaching lesson, one teacher on the white-board
>> lecturing, and the other typing the python-translation of the lecture into
>> code on a big screen.
>>
>> Do you find teamed presentations to be more effective, contrived, or
>> overwhelming than just speaking aloud to model the cognitive process of
>> model development? Modeling a mature process for correcting for mistakes
>> and errors is sometimes absent from prepared demos that make it look like
>> it's so easy for *them* (because they spent time preparing and rehearsing)
>>
>>
>> On Sunday, June 23, 2019, Wes Turner <wes.turner at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sunday, June 23, 2019, C. Cossé <ccosse at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, Jun 23, 2019 at 11:36 AM Wes Turner <wes.turner at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> In one lesson developing a simple solar system in pygame, for example,
>>>>> you can teach everything from the meaning of pi, periodic motion, dynamic
>>>>> graphics, orders of magnitude, scaling, OOP,  ... all kinds of stuff.
>>>>>
>>>>> What a fun problem! Does PyGame have 2D physics? Kerbal Space Program
>>>>> looks fun, too
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> It might by now ... but that's another big lesson: don't use somebody
>>>> else's physics libs ... do that yourself too!  For the above problem there
>>>> is nothing more than F=ma (W=mg ... Weight=mass x accel_due2_grav) ... the
>>>> rest is circle stuff.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> AND basically lay the ground-work for developing their own 2D
>>>>>> plotting software.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> What grade levels or math and physics knowledge would you think
>>>>> appropriate for these tasks?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> No prior knowledge ... it's all on the teacher to be familiar enough to
>>>> walk all over and essentially "drag them through" (the kids=them) the
>>>> process of developing their own quick solar system model.  It would be a
>>>> good team-teaching lesson, one teacher on the white-board lecturing, and
>>>> the other typing the python-translation of the lecture into code on a big
>>>> screen.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Do you start with 2D observational data; as a model development
>>> exercise? Is that freely available online somewhere?
>>>
>>> For the 3D cube projected into 2D space rotation problem:
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_transformation
>>>
>>> > In each reference frame, an observer can use a local coordinate system
>>> (most exclusively Cartesian coordinates in this context) to measure
>>> lengths, and a clock to measure time intervals. An observer is a real or
>>> imaginary entity that can take measurements, say humans, or any other
>>> living organism—or even robots and computers. An event is something that
>>> happens at a point in space at an instant of time, or more formally a point
>>> in spacetime. The transformations connect the space and time coordinates of
>>> an event as measured by an observer in each frame.[nb 1]
>>> >
>>> > They supersede the Galilean transformation of Newtonian physics, which
>>> assumes an absolute space and time (see Galilean relativity). The Galilean
>>> transformation is a good approximation only at relative speeds much smaller
>>> than the speed of light. Lorentz transformations have a number of
>>> unintuitive features that do not appear in Galilean transformations. For
>>> example, they reflect the fact that observers moving at different
>>> velocities may measure different distances, elapsed times, and even
>>> different orderings of events, but always such that the speed of light is
>>> the same in all inertial reference frames. The invariance of light speed is
>>> one of the postulates of special relativity.
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> - Specify the coordinates of the vertices of a cube
>>>>> - Draw the cube in 3D (2D from a perspective)
>>>>> - Rotate the cube or move the 'camera/observer's (around a point other
>>>>> than the origin) in 3D space and draw each frame at time t
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -Charlie
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Sun, Jun 23, 2019 at 11:09 AM kirby urner <kirby.urner at gmail.com>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Somewhere every summer, I tend to call into question the wisdom of
>>>>>>> buying the kids another scientific calculator at the drug store (we call
>>>>>>> them that here, pharmacies have calculators hanging on racks at the
>>>>>>> checkout, to cash in on gullibility and impulse buys).
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> This year:
>>>>>>> https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/4dsolutions/School_of_
>>>>>>> Tomorrow/blob/master/Sandbox_Example.ipynb
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> That's of course the read-only version (vs. mybinder.org) with the
>>>>>>> benefit of a free video at the bottom, not visible on Github, where I give
>>>>>>> my viewers the elevator speech i.e. pitch Jupyter Notebooks using Python as
>>>>>>> superior to slaving away with a graphing calculator.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Not that anyone is still using graphing calculators right?  Sorry if
>>>>>>> I'm beating a dead horse (idiom).
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Kirby
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> Edu-sig mailing list
>>>>>>> Edu-sig at python.org
>>>>>>> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ccosse.github.io
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>>
>>>> ccosse.github.io
>>>>
>>>
>
> --
>
> ccosse.github.io
>
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