2009-10-13

Destructive Tendencies

I have a few ideas that I've been throwing around about presentations for class. Any input on these ideas would be wonderful.
  1. Super Bouncy Balls - United Nuclear provides the necessary chemicals to make your own Super Bouncy Balls. While it's more of a chemistry demonstration, it would present the opportunity to go from a chemical equation and molecular masses to how much of each chemical is needed. There's also the downside of giving 50 high schoolers each their own superball. I suppose only one needs to be made, but I'd actually like to involve the students somehow.
  2. Something Small - When I was in high school I began the trek to my current profession after working in a biology lab. Being able to manipulate items too small to see and retrieve observable results was amazing. I'm not sure where this would go; while plasmas offer plenty of opportunities in this respect, most of the math is a bit too involved for class.
  3. Math Rap - I recently conducted a survey of the class on what topics they'd most like to learn about. Top of the list was football and rap, while football has plenty of opportunities to involve math, I've been tearing my hair out day and night about rap. Off the top of the head, a few topics come to mind. Rhythmic structures could be used to discuss how a consistent number of syllables in each line gives the impression of better flow. On the other hand, I have an oscilloscope that would allow me to talk about waveforms and superposition (in a pretty intuitive way). Similarly, using a computer and audio software to do FFTs would let us analyze an audio sample for its beat pattern.

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