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Buffalo State PHY 690 - Correlated with the CASTLE Curriculum

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The New York State Regents Physics Core CurriculumCorrelated with the CASTLE Curriculumhttp://physicsed.buffalostate.edu/pubs/PHY690/Frank2004CASTLE/By Peter G. FrankThis project completes requirements of PHY 690 at Buffalo State Collegehttp://physicsed.buffalostate.edu/pubs/PHY690/Frank2004CASTLE/ 7/21/04Electricity Visualized, The Capacitor-Aided System for Teaching and Learning ElectricityProject 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 afoundation of understanding of electrical concepts. Students will be working in small groups while doing the various activities, which can foster cooperative learning. CASTLE uses hands-on activities that engage students and help them develop explanatory models of various electricalphenomena. 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 .1μF (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 ofquestions so that the teachers can concentrate on the students and not making answers keys. 2http://physicsed.buffalostate.edu/pubs/PHY690/Frank2004CASTLE/ 7/21/04Also, 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 CurriculumTopics Covered by CASTLE Topics Not Covered by CastleThorough Investigation of Circuits Mathematical Problem Solving (Weak)Measurable Quantities in a Circuit (i.e. Potential Difference, Current)Static ElectricityElectric Fields (not very well developed)How light bulbs workResistanceAlthough 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.3http://physicsed.buffalostate.edu/pubs/PHY690/Frank2004CASTLE/ 7/21/04Short 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 vaguelyconnected 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 4http://physicsed.buffalostate.edu/pubs/PHY690/Frank2004CASTLE/ 7/21/04very 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,


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Buffalo State PHY 690 - Correlated with the CASTLE Curriculum

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