Recent content by ZapperZ

If you are teaching a class, try it. You'd be surprised at how many students got this wrong, which is why I continue to use this at the beginning of the lesson BEFORE I start on the topic. I tell my students that anyone, regardless of whether that person has formally learned physics or not, is...

I have. I actually gave this at the very beginning of the topic on buoyancy, mainly to judge their ability to analyze the problem and to give a rational explanation for what they think will happen. I do not penalize them for giving the wrong answer. It's a common question that I've come across...

This is a rather neat animation and certainly can be useful to a student trying to visualize such a motion. I think the initial step would be to make the connection between SHM and circular motion first, because for a student just learning this, this connection is not obvious. I use the...

@EsbMtrx : What exactly is your career goal? So far in this thread, the end-game seems to be getting into an PhD program, which is not a career goal. If the intention here is to become a practicing physics, either as a university faculty member or research scientist, then as Vanadium has...

The difference between a "calculator" and ChatGPT is that the calculator does not do the "thinking" for you, while ChatGPT often tries (and in many cases, fail) to do just that. What I mean in doing the thinking is that it tries to make correlations and THEN tries to establish the causation...

I'm sorry that I'm responding to this more than a month late. I use a lot of online apps and simulation as part of my "in-class activities" and problem-solving exercises. One of the PhET simulations that I often use is the projectile motion simulation (the "Lab" option)...

These two will be the strong contenders for my photos of the year. There's our cruise ship, the Disney Wonder. And in the background, Dawes Glacier at Endicott Arm, Alaska. We got even closer to the glacier on an excursion when we got onto a catamaran. Photos were taken on May 25, 2022. Zz.

Actually, even that is not as clear-cut. The nature of what a "work function" is is more complicated than such a simple answer. For example, in many instances, it is treated as simply the image charge potential of an electron emitted very near the surface of the material, thus creating an image...

The major problem here is that you are asking a student to possibly get something that he/she does not already own. This can easily be a financial burden, and it is only for one single purpose, which is for his/her interaction with you. What I suggest you do is first of all, check what the...

To answer your original question, even though it is a month too late, is the area of electromagnetic fields. RF fields and RF system design are part of this huge area. Many physicists and electrical engineers in this field work on waveguides, RF cavity designs, charged-beam physics, etc. I...

vela, Like you, I too had to adjust quite a bit of my assessment while conducting online or remote classes. The problem of "cheating" is certainly an issue with online exams. As with you, I had to de-emphasize exams, making them less than 50% of the total grade. My assessment comes in...

{Administrative Note: This was the last PF Photo Contest that I administered. It has been a great run since I started this contest more than 10 years ago on this forum. Thank you to everyone who had participated in it. It was fun (most of the time). Special thanks to long-time participants...

Technically, that's correct. But I'm not going to pull hairs about that. It's bad enough that some people think "dusk" or "dawn" is defined by the color of the sky. Anything with the sun close enough to the horizon will be fine for this contest. It will be a judgement call. Zz.

There are two issues here: It will take time for you to get such funding, assuming that you're successful. For example, you have already past by most of the DOE/NSF/NIST/etc. funding proposal cycle. So the earliest you can submit your proposal is middle of next year, and you won't see any...

OK. A few things. First of all, we have a dedicated contests for panorama photos. So I was hoping that we all get that out of our system in those contests. Secondly, I think when I changed the rules to remove the size limitations on the photos, the rule against photo post-processing and image...