The New York State Regents Physics Core Curriculum Correlated with the CASTLE Curriculum http physicsed buffalostate edu pubs PHY690 Frank2004CASTLE By Peter G Frank This project completes requirements of PHY 690 at Buffalo State College http physicsed buffalostate edu pubs PHY690 Frank2004CASTLE 7 21 04 Electricity Visualized The Capacitor Aided System for Teaching and Learning Electricity Project or CASTLE Project was designed by Melvin S Steinberg to help students learn about electricity effectively and efficiently The CASTLE project was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and the US Department of Education National Diffusion Network This curriculum concentrates mostly on circuits and uses capacitors in most of the activities This project encompasses CASTLE curricular activities with the New York State Education Department NYSED and where it meets or does not meet the New York State Regents Physics Core NYSRPC Curriculum The CASTLE curriculum was designed to address students preconceptions and to build a foundation of understanding of electrical concepts Students will be working in small groups while doing the various activities which can foster cooperative learning CASTLE uses handson activities that engage students and help them develop explanatory models of various electrical phenomena Although packages of materials can be purchased via PASCO for a group for 252 most of the materials can probably be found in the typical physics lab Materials such as batteries flashlight bulbs wires voltmeters and ammeters are used in the CASTLE activities Capacitors may have to be purchased but Pasco only recommends one or two per for a typical physics class Pasco sells 1 F microfarad capacitors for 42 each The CASTLE book can also be found at the PASCO website http www pasco com products groups 48 314 1 html and contains links to download the student manuals and contact information to get the teacher materials The teacher section gives a lot of advice to teachers on what to look for and precautions to take when doing some of the activities The answers are also provided for most of questions so that the teachers can concentrate on the students and not making answers keys 2 http physicsed buffalostate edu pubs PHY690 Frank2004CASTLE 7 21 04 Also all of the student materials are freely reproducible and in addition to the activities that students are involved in there are also many review sheets and quizzes that can be given to students to complete in order to reinforce and assess what the students have learned Table 1 The CASTLE Curriculum Topics Covered by CASTLE Thorough Investigation of Circuits Measurable Quantities in a Circuit i e Potential Difference Current Topics Not Covered by Castle Mathematical Problem Solving Weak Static Electricity Electric Fields not very well developed How light bulbs work Resistance Although this curriculum uses capacitors as a basis of its investigations there are many activities that do not use the capacitors at all The capacitors are used because one can observe transient lighting of the bulbs as the capacitors are charged and discharged Arons 1990 Capacitors also help explain and model the ideas of forces acting at distances how charges interact with each other and how electric fields are created and how they interacted with charged particles In many ways capacitors also act as parallel plates and create electric fields between them CASTLE also uses the idea of moving electrical charges causing magnetic fields By putting a compass near a current carrying conductor students can qualitatively see how the compass needle deflects The amount of deflection is then related to the strength of the current going through the wire Light bulbs are used through out many of the activities in the CASTLE curriculum also Students learn how a light bulb works and that electrical charges need a closed path to continuously flow The brightness of the lights again allow students to see qualitatively how much current is going through a particular part of a circuit without using voltmeters and ammeters 3 http physicsed buffalostate edu pubs PHY690 Frank2004CASTLE 7 21 04 Short circuits series and parallel circuits generators and motors are also used and discussed through activities in the CASTLE curriculum These devices combined with light bulbs wires batteries and capacitors help students related multiple forms of energy to each other They also allow students to make predictions about how one device may influence another and the different ways that these devices can be used to suit our needs The CASTLE Curriculum also teaches students skills that can be taken out of the physics class and used in other classes as well as their everyday lives The CASTLE Curriculum uses a compressible fluid model to represent charge conduction Mosca 1993 This model provides an easily understandable analogy for students and helps them to understand potential difference However it not necessarily a valid model potential difference is actually driven by electric fields The compressible fluid model is vaguely connected to the electric field model however teachers may want to emphasize the connection and take the model to the next level The CASTLE curriculum meets most of the standards set by the NYSRPC which are described in Table 3 Static electricity and mathematical problem solving are two areas which the CASTLE curriculum does not cover as shown in Table 1 The good thing is that static electricity is a very small portion of the NYSRPC and can be covered in a week In addition the students build a very strong understanding of the concepts which make any supplemental problems a teacher gives them a little easier On Table 2 see attached link you can see which of the activities in the CASTLE curriculum overlap with at least some of the NYSR Physics Core A relatively new part of the NYSR Physics Standards is the use of light bulbs in various circuits The CASTLE curriculum uses light bulbs in many of its activities and students become 4 http physicsed buffalostate edu pubs PHY690 Frank2004CASTLE 7 21 04 very familiar with the workings of a light bulb and how they react in different types of circuits Every student enrolled in Regent physics takes a standardized test at the end of the year and has to pass it in order to get Regents credit Because of this the symbols and terminology used is very important The CASTLE Curriculum uses many of the same symbols and terms used on the Regents
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