Hands on Teaching 1Hands on Teaching with Student Built HovercraftBy: Thomas PearseIn affiliation with: Buffalo State College,Physics Education [email protected] on Teaching 2Historical SignificanceEducational professionals have advocated both the processes and significance of hands on education for over forty years (Knezek, 2000). Over these last two decades the debate which started as whether hands on teaching is more effective then the traditional lecture approach has shifted more toward which models of a hands on teaching are most effective. Whether it’s exploring pine cones with the use of informational texts (Yopp, 2006) or creating a manufacturing lab for teaching technology (Sexton, 2008), the evidence shows that hands on teaching yields a higher level of understanding then the traditional lecture based classroom. The success of hands on approachs to education has been so successful in the United States, that some countries, Japan being foremost, have made it a national policy to shift education to a morehands on approach (Knezek, 2000). Hands on education is a proven approach to successfully teach children and adults alike. I have observed that taking a hands on approach in teaching physics has had significant impact on the understanding of the students in my classroom. When I first started teaching it quickly became obvious that lecturing on Newtonian Physics did very little in helping students understand the natural physical laws. While student would show some ability to identify a particular equation and plug in known’s to formulate an answer, they would continually perform poorly on questions designed to test their qualitative understanding of Newtonian physics. Without understanding qualitatively the laws that the students are using, the chances of retaining any ability to later identify or manipulate quantitative explanations are minimal at best. Professorand author Arnold Arons states that “Learners must be confronted with direct experience, and with contradictions and inconsistencies, in such ways as to induce them to articulate lines of argument and reasoning in their own words and to lead them to abandon the deep-seated,Hands on Teaching 3plausible, intuitive preconceptions that impede development of the contra intuitive but “correct” view”.(Aarons page 57) Aarons draws a more focused light to the difficulty newcomers to physics have with their understanding of Newton’s law of inertia due to being “burdened with common sense ideas about the behavior of moving bodies”.(Aarons page 59) Aarons point is thatdue to a lifetime of experiencing motion within the confines of Earth’s gravitational field, students have a difficult time imagining bodies that when in motion do not come to rest on their own. Personal experience has shown me that virtual approaches to this problem do little to cure the preconceptions student have in their understanding of how bodies should act according to natural laws.Personal HistoryIt’s with this Aarons text in mind that I started looking for ways to demonstrate the truer nature of physics in order to counter the misleading view students experience every day. One solution is through the use of a hovercraft. The basic operating principal of the hovercraft is to greatly reduce friction by floating the body of the craft on a cushion of air. A properly built hovercraft can travel amazingly far with no apparent reduction in velocity. This observation is a starting point for the new physics student toward an better understanding of the true nature of Newtonian physics.The first hovercraft I ever used was a hard plastic disc with a built in fan that was purchased commercially for about 45 dollars. The item was commercially called a “Kick Disc” and was sold in local toy stores. This was a great toy and remains in my classroom for smaller and quickly accessed demos. The one problem I constantly had was the limited clearance the Kick disc had. When attempting to do long distance observation I found that even the newerHands on Teaching 4hallways at my school were uneven at best and the disc often times will bottom out slowing its speed or changing its direction due to increased friction. Over the period of a couple years I tried other hovercraft models, for instance the student built compact which uses a balloon to force air between a compact disc and the surface the disc is sitting on. (White, 2008) This disc works greatfor a table top demonstration but is limited to that type of surface. During the summer of 2008 while working with the Canisius College Science Camp I had the opportunity and challenge to design an inexpensive yet reliable hovercraft that students could build with limited adult supervision or support. After several weeks of testing we developed a hovercraft that works incredibly well on most indoor surfaces and can be built for as little as 5 dollars. The 5 dollar hovercraft can be built in the classroom in about 35 minutes. After the hovercraft is built it can be used for discussion points and demonstrations to help students reformtheir conceptions on how moving bodies act according to the true physical laws of motion. The 5dollar hovercraft travels over 50 meters of hallway without showing any significant signs of slowing. It can be used outside in a parking lot if the school halls aren’t long enough. It can carrythe weight of a red brick and still perform the same as it does with only the battery pack. Many of the students who have been introduced to Newtonian physics through experimentation with the hovercraft say it’s helped them understand more the role friction plays in developing their preconceptions. It’s through identifying frictions presence and its role that students have made the most progress in reorganizing their understanding how bodies should move in the absence of friction. This results in a more matured concept of Newtonian physical laws and thus a greater retention. Student responses to open ended qualitative questions generally refer to their experiences working with the hovercraft.ImplementationHands on Teaching 5Using a hovercraft to demonstrate the true physical laws of motion aligns with what Arnold Aarons talks about in his book. Aarons discusses the importance of offering students real experiences that are developed to give student new observations which work to change preconceptions brought with them into the physics classroom. There are several
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