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Dave Edwards in Edinburgh

My thoughts on the S207 session

Friday 31 May 2013 at 18:26
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Responding to Sally's comments:

During the session we got through rather less than I had anticipated – I think when Alan ran the show last year we covered a lot more. However, I don’t think that mattered too much. I could have run a whole revision week. In fact, maybe that will be the result when I post the material on my forum.

I was also a bit surprised about the seating – I think I moved the front two tables, and then other people set up the rear two and sat at them!  Perhaps I had indicated they should help? Of course, a teacher will expect everyone to crowd onto the back row.

As we were going to be looking at the whiteboard and the screen I felt that a row was the right solution.

The glossary matching exercise proved surprisingly tough. I may need to trim the material down for next year. It also took longer than I anticipated.  However I like the fact it got people moving around and talking, so I would probably keep the format.

The ‘silly mistakes’ section could certainly be trimmed and updated.

For the revision questions I had deliberately not over-prepared myself. I wanted the students to have an opportunity to see plenty of mistakes cropping up, and to genuinely have an opportunity to discuss and solve the problems themselves. I was very pleased when they noticed the cannonball time they had worked out was for the upwards journey only.

The penalty for this approach was that we moved very slowly. To some extent, my inability to see the whiteboard slowed us down.  I think the next time I would probably have my own answers written out so that I could copy them onto the board as we talked. And I would switch to using prepared solutions on the screen after doing the first couple of questions on the whiteboard.

As you point out, the students got through the Part A exam questions very quickly. I thought they would, and we had no need to go through anything on the whiteboard.

I still feel I am at an early stage with S207.  It is very different from the other modules I work on, which often skim the surface of topics. Meeting with students is really helpful in helping me see what they find hard to understand, and in identifying ways to explain topics. The question on spectacles was quite unexpected, so I will give that a bit more thought.
Tags: revision, s207
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Dave Edwards in Edinburgh

Feedback from the S207 revision day

Friday 31 May 2013 at 18:24
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My staff tutor for S207, Sally Jordan, attended the session, and she kindly provided the following comments on the session:

I know that planning was a bit of an issue – very many thanks for all you had done and for coming so well prepared. I felt that the balance of activities on the day was good.

There was a lovely friendly atmosphere throughout. I felt that you did the right thing in rearranging the furniture, but I was slightly surprised to see that the rearrangement gave us two rows – in such an otherwise informal setting, it would have seemed very strange had some of the students sat on a row in front of the others. I’d be interested to know what seating arrangements you generally prefer for tutorials – I quite like getting students working in groups around small tables, though I know that can be a problem if you’re making lots of use of Powerpoint. I appreciated the name labels and the fact that we all introduced ourselves at the beginning.

The dayschool started nicely on time (and ran to time all day) and I liked the way the agenda was shared with the group. I might have asked right at the beginning if there was anything else they’d like to cover (this sort-of happened – there was a pause and the students seemed very happy with what you had planned). I’d also normally suggest sending the tutorial plan to the students beforehand, either by group email or by posting to the tutor group forums – that gives them chance to add topics for discussion. However, I do appreciate that there would have been several difficulties with this approach on this occasion, and it is also perhaps less appropriate for a revision session than for other tutorials.  The students did get a choice later in the day, which was lovely, and they had the confidence to ask for an explanation of lenses (which you and Robert between you explained quite well).

The first activity (the matching of terms to their definitions) was lovely and getting students to attempt to write a definition first was very sensible and worked well. I’ve always considered this part of the S207 exam to be the most difficult and I haven’t changed my mind as a result of yesterday!


From here we moved onto the discussion of ‘silly mistakes’. I thought this was a good idea, though I might has included fewer examples relating to vector notation and more other things (you could perhaps have given an answer to an incorrect number of sig figs or with incorrect units? – or is that more appropriate for S104 than S207?).

After the summary of Book 2 topics, we moved into the first set of examples and I think these worked extremely effectively to build the students’ confidence in their ability to answer exam questions. With you, Robert, Alan and me all having an opinion as to the best way of tackling the problems I was slightly anxious that the students would be confused, but actually I think these three students will have benefitted from seeing a variety of approaches.

After lunch and Robert’s introduction to the S207 exam and the discussion of  exam and revision strategy,  I really liked the fact that you gave the students the choice of either returning to the examples in your Powerpoint or working through an old exam paper -  and didn’t they do the exam paper well!  After giving them a sensible length of time, you and Robert discussed the questions with them – lovely.

All in all then, an excellent day. You, Robert and Alan have different but complementary styles and your collective knowledge of the subject matter and experience of teaching shone through!

Tags: definition, exam, s207, revision
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Dave Edwards in Edinburgh

S207 'The physical world' revision day

Tuesday 14 May 2013 at 14:08
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Preparing for the S207 revision day is a big challenge. The module covers such a huge range of physics, so students can ask questions about almost anything.

Last year there were three tutors along, and we relied heavily on Alan Cayless's experience and organisational skills. This year it will be just me and Robert Gibson running the event.

Robert and I exchanged one or two emails about the event, but we did not mange to get into regular contact, so I set out to prepare a plan for the day. I worked around building a PowerPoint presentation holding a set of revision questions and answers, and a very brief review of key topics for each book.

I sent this email to Robert about my thinking:

I have also worked through the "S207 Revision Examples". This is pretty good for the core of our session. I am thinking of turning it into a PowerPoint-plus-whiteboard activity. I would want to emphasise thinking physically about each problem first. For each book we could have a slide of some key physics issues. Then a Question slide. I would ask the students (as a group) to explain the issues and the physics solution method, then let them work it out in small groups. Then a slide of the 'official answer' (or our own version on the whiteboard).


That document needs to be supplemented with some additional stuff for the later chapters. I am sure we could find that amongst the materials we have or get it from last year's TMAs.


We could precede all this with some introductory marks.


And follow it with a review of the question paper and strategy discussion.

Then let the students go through selected 2002 questions.


Also, for students who are really well prepared and who can solve the problems easily we need a few extra problem sheets to keep them occupied.


What do you think?



I soon followed that up with an another idea:

I have also found a set of papers for a matching-definitions activity. I think this would also be useful early in the day to get people's brains working.

Then I sent a draft of the PowerPoint:

 

The attached file is what I have so far. I have added three questions to the existing set, on relativity, the uncertainty principle and particle physics.

Hopefully this is heading in the right direction, and the slides will be viewable across the room?
Tags: powerpoint, physics, s207, revision
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Dave Edwards in Edinburgh

S207 Quantum mechanics with Elluminate

Wednesday 10 April 2013 at 21:37
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This is another new tutorial topic for me! The tutorial falls in the early part of S207's Book 7. Therefore I only really need to consider  material on reasons physicists developed quantum theory, wave-particle duality, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and the one-dimensional time-independent Schrodinger equation for square wells and barriers.

I want to emphasise physical thinking as a means of getting into the maths. The material on the Schrodinger equation is quite mathematical and complex.

I decide to focus on the role of standing waves. These could be waves in a glass of wine (or cup of coffee), or in a skipping rope. I want to show how the confinement of the waves leads to discrete wavelength values, which then give rise to discrete energy values - quantization.

I sketched some one-dimensional standing waves on a rope, and wrote down expression for the possible wavelengths in terms of the length of the rope. Then I put these values into sine and cosine wave functions. These are the permitted waves that can 'stand' on the string.

To prepare the actual tutorial material I started to build a PowerPoint presentation.  Individual slides were prepared by making use of MS Paint (sketching diagram and graph axes), constructing a series of sine and cosine graphs with Excel, and preparing images  of equations in the MS Word equation editor. Student interaction was designed in with some simple quiz questions, by asking students to sketch curves onto my graph axes, and by asking students to do their own algebra.

A copy of the PowerPoint is available here.

Tags: sketch, elluminate, s207, excel, quiz, powerpoint, wave, physical, quantum
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Dave Edwards in Edinburgh

Planning and delivering an S207 tutorial

Monday 8 April 2013 at 10:03
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I decided to deal with magnetic induction first. during the planning, I working through an explanation of the topic based on Faraday's law. But then I decided instead to use last year's TMA question about the transformer. I found that I could include Faraday's law nicely within this.

In practise, this provided a useful opportunity to discuss the merits of  "remembering nothing - so there is less to forget in the exam"! The transformer equation is simply obtained directly from Faraday's law.

The lens calculation proved effective during the tutorial. Students were unclear about how to address even this simple two lens system. We discussed real and virtual images and the 'real is posiive' sign convention. I explained that the lenses are simply handled individually, in turn, working out image and then object distances.

The laser diffraction experiment went down very well. A student commented afterwards that he would have been disappointed if we had not done something like this - and he mentioned the value of our bouncing ball demonstration and discussion at the first tutorial.

The experiment task was to work out the ratio of the wavelengths of the red and green light from a laser pointer, using the grating equation. We also estimated the uncertainty. In fact we got exactly the ratio that is obtained from the wavelengths marked on the laser.  This supported the uncertainty calculation of +/-0.01

Overall this seemed to be an enjoyable session, with a strong emphasis  on using physical principles.  I could repeat this next year.

After the session I had an email from a non-attender asking for information from the tutorial. I placed versions of the transformer and lens questions on the tutor group forum, with some tips to help guide the reader.However, there was no student discussion of this material and when I spoke to the student a couple of weeks later he had clearly not used the material.

[6 March 2013]

Tags: transformer, s207, forum, faraday, uncertainty, lens, physical, bouncing, wavelength, laser diffraction
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Dave Edwards in Edinburgh

Planning an S207 face-to-face tutorial

Monday 8 April 2013 at 10:02
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Edited by Dave Edwards, Monday 8 April 2013 at 10:02

The S207 (The physical world) tutorial is face-to-face for Book 6 (Dynamic fields and waves). It will be followed a couple of week later with an Elluminate sesion.

The topics the students should have covered at this point are time-varying magnetic fields and induction, waves and ray optics.

The TMA has questions on induction, diffraction and relativity.  I plan to leave relativity to the Elluminate session.

Last year my tutorial reviewed some tricky questions from the preceding TMA, and included a diffraction experiment for the students to carry out.

I decided that there is no need this time to review the previous TMA. I should provide something on the electrical work - emphasing physical principles.

I also found an old exam question on the use of the lens equation, which I think is instructive for sign conventions and selection of rays for ray tracing. I might extend this into a wider discussion of optics - and perhaps take along a telescope.

My own interferogram software might be used to illustrate wavefronts.

I will also take a spectroscope to allow students to look at spectra.

[6 march 2013]

Tags: spectroscope, tma, s207, induction, ray, face-to-face, wave, field, physical, convention, principle, diffraction, magnetic, optics
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