Recent content by flintstones

I teach high school and am trying to put together a resource that teaches students how to measure lengths properly with a ruler or meter stick. They don't understand how many decimal places to include in their answer (i.e. they will often write 1.7 cm when it should be 1.70 cm), and they...

I see. So the free-body diagram would have the adhesion force going up, and the force of gravity going down, and no other forces?

Thank you - that video will work much better as an example. Adhesive force makes sense, thanks!

So I’m a high school physics teacher and I came up with the question above. However I haven’t given it to my students because I’m not sure what the answer would be. There is a force holding the gum up, and that force must balance the force of gravity. I’d probably call that an applied force, so...

Thanks! I'll give that a try. I think it'll work well.

I do have quite a bit of autonomy, and I think your suggestion is great. I will try that. Thanks for the caution. It prompted me to look at the curriculum again and it actually says "understand that all accelerating charges produce EMR", so that's good. However, I can see one of my students...

Oh, that will be excellent! Thanks so much!

Yes, it's been quite challenging to teach for that reason! Especially once we start getting into wave particle duality and it's super hard to explain, possibly even impossible, without any math. Thanks for the experiment idea - I will check with the lab tech at the university here and see if he...

Thank you! Most of my students have not learned any calculus yet, so we mostly stick to discussing things on a qualitative level. But I will have a look at your notes, since if I understand the concepts better myself, I will be able to figure out how to explain them more clearly.

Summary:: I teach high school (grade 12) and have always struggled with teaching about electromagnetic radiation. I'm looking for resources aimed at laypeople about EMR that may give me some ideas on how to teach it more clearly. I teach high school (grade 12). We have just finished a unit...

Suppose you are analyzing this image. The question to answer is: Explain why the alpha particle's path has a larger radius than either of the beta particle paths. Justify your answer using either momentum or charge-to-mass ratio. When you are answering this, suppose you know that , in...

I'm trying to make up an example for my students to illustrate that in nuclear decay, mass-energy and momentum are both conserved. I found this problem: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/304277/calculate-velocity-of-radon-220-nuclear-after-decay I am trying to modify it so that they...

Thanks, this is what I thought. But now I'm confused about something else. Take the sodium atom for example. The energy levels go from approximately -5.1 eV to zero. So photons with an energy of more than 5.1 eV should ionize the atom and be absorbed. Does this mean ANY photon with an energy...

I just want to confirm something. You need about 13.6 eV of energy to ionize a hydrogen atom in the ground state. Can the atom absorb a photon with 15 eV of energy? I think it can. This would free the electron, and the freed electron would move off with a kinetic energy of 15 minus 13.6 eV...

I'm a high school teacher. In the curriculum, students are required to explain that polarization of light shows that light is a transverse wave. My answer: In order to explain polarization, we have to consider the electric field vibration direction. For example, on a wave that propagates...