communication board

June 24, 2008 I met with George Brown yesterday and got to see some of the Physics lab stuff. Here are some of the things I saw, and there's much, much more.

• 5 each of brass, Al, wood, and plastic weights
• all different sizes of stands... 24in., 32in., 48in. etc.
• springs of all sorts-- different tension, gage, length, etc. They ranged from ~1/8" diameter to 1" diameter and 1"-8" long

He also told me about a Wilber force pendulum saying that a lot of physicists were fascinated with them. Its a simple pendulum, but instead of KE=>PE, it converts torsional energy to Kinetic Energy. he has one model to demonstrate so he's going to try and rigg it up so we can see it some time.

Next week, there is one lab open that we can play with things (if you're around Marc). In July, all the lab rooms are full, but in August 1 room is free so we can have a corner to spread out materials and work in there if we want.

George seemed really keen on helping us and knows a ton about teaching and lab set ups so we should definitely use him as a reference.

Well, that's the update. Let me know what you guys think should be the next step(s).

June 27, 2008 Awesome, Sora. Wilber force pendulums are neat, I've heard they can be kind of tricky to set up, but I would definitely like to try if he has an appropriate spring!

I just emailed George Brown to try to reserve the physics labs. Hopefully one will be available (crossing fingers!).

In the next couple weeks we need to get a flyer put together (Lynne & Scott will help if needed). Flyer Text

Lets start thinking about the Synthesis, tying everything together. Then we can see where we want the students to be at the end and we can make sure that they are getting there.

August 1, 2008

The room is reserved! George will not be in town when we do our workshop though.