1. There is no such thing as suction, there is only the absence of air. Its called a vacuum. Many students are heavily vested in this particular misconception, especially since it is such a part of our vernacular. Basically, atmospheric pressure is very, very strong! Check out the Madgeberg Spheres as an example of just how hard it will resist. Think of vector arrows pushing in on the spheres from all directions.
2. There is no such thing as cold, only the absence of heat. Its called the Kinetic Theory of Gases. Temperature is a measure of the kinetic energy of the molecules of an object, whether its a gas or not.

Yes, its late. Yes, I’m tired. I’ll continue this list in another post. Stay tuned and as always, thanks for reading.

Students are tardy if the they enter the classroom after the tardy bell rings. Makes sense, right? At Putnam City, all of the doors are kept locked when shut, therefore, students cannot enter the classroom late, unless someone opens the door for them. And therein lies the problem with their politeness. I’ll continue to explain. I usually stand at the door and close it just as the tardy bell rings. I then proceed to get students going on the bellwork or whatever other task I have for them to start class. This means I am not at the door and cannot see who comes in late to class. There is a sign on my door, which says “For entry, knock politely” which students read “To sneak in, knock quietly”. This is what usually happens. Students knock quietly and my students, being the polite human beings they are, open the door and return to their seat. Usually before I can see who is coming in tardy.

So there you have it, my students are annoyingly polite! This put me in a other than pleasant mood since it happened once, I addressed it, and then it happened twice more! We then proceeded to submit papers to turnitin.com, which you don’t even want to hear about. Really. I’m not going to talk about it.

That was the “bad” part of my day. Not very bad, right? I didn’t think so either. I love my job. And therein lies the good part of my day. I went up to the teacher workroom to check my mail box and was greeted by a fluorescent pink sheet of paper there in the box. What was this pink paper? Glad you asked. It was the final ballot of the “teacher of the year” voting for our school. You might ask why that is significant. My colleagues have voted me through the first two rounds which means I’m on the final ballot “against” two other teachers. Knowing these two people, there’s no way I have a chance to be voted teacher of the year for Putnam City High School, but that’s okay. The other two teachers are the type of teachers who make an impact on students and they are both very deserving and after all, that’s what its all about anyway. Impacting students lives. I am just honored to be nominated. Thanks faculty, I appreciate your confidence.

Some of you know, some of you may not know: I hope to someday have a catering business and/or restaurant. I like to think I can do pulled pork pretty well. I have a small following of folks who tell me that my pork is pretty good. I also do a pretty good job of (real) chicken and sausage gumbo and I make a decent crawfish Étouffée. It’s all homemade from scratch, there’s no boxed stuff in our house when it comes to cajun food. Oh, by the way, I’m originally from Louisiana.

This weekend I decided I’d like to try adding another something to my menu, at least one that could be seasonal. That’s one thing about the South you should know, they deep fry everything! So, why not a turkey? Yes, a full sized turkey. Here’s how you prepare it:

1. Thaw your turkey.
2. Prepare a marinade known as “creole butter”, which contains butter and so many seasonings I don’t have room to list them all here.
3. Inject your turkey with the marinade, using a very large hypodermic needle-type device.
4. Let rest for at least 1 hour.
5. Cook for about 45 minutes (14 lb. turkey) in a hot bath of peanut oil, which was previously heated to approximately 350° F.
6. Remove from oil bath.
7. Eat the most tasty, flavorful, moist, turkey you’ve ever eaten.

I cooked one tonight and it was delicious. I’ll definitely be cooking it with the spicy marinade when I do it from here on out.  There’s no way I can take steps backwards from the tastiness we had tonight. The skin is delicious, but I only had two bites of it. Seriously.

We checked with a local cajun restaurant in town and they want $56 for a fried turkey. Yikes! I think I can do it quite a bit cheaper than that. I’m not trying to undercut them too much, because its a valuable product, but $56? Come on!

If you are interested in ordering, “JB’s BBQ” is officially taking orders. It’s tasty!

I’ll just be here, in my classroom, with students who are retaking tests, listening to music, and getting updates on the most expensive, most complicated machine known to man, learning how what causes the Universe to exist in the state in which it does. That is all.

I only bring this up because I did the same thing today in class and therein lies my question. Is this a valid way to teach students the definition of a term/word? Because I can tell you I didn’t really get a good grasp on the meaning of these two contrasting educational research terms.

I wonder if my students felt the same way about the terms I was working with in class this morning? We were talking about constructive and destructive interference. I defined those two terms for them, but I chose not to define in-phase and out-of-phase. This refers to two signals which either correspond directly (in-phase) or are offset from each other (out-of-phase). Signals can be anywhere from zero to 359 degrees out of phase with one another. I guess my one saving grace is that I did a demo using two phase-shifted speakers which completely cancel the sound from the other speaker. Its my favorite demo of the year, by the way.

I will be revisiting phase shift with students tomorrow. Even if there is a chance students feel half as vague about phase as I do about about matched pairs, I need to re-teach the concept. At the bare minimum, I’ll be asking if anyone has any questions at all about phase and I will certainly think twice before teaching “definition by example” next time.

Today I have been working as both teacher and parent. Instead of working on schoolwork, both for the classes I am teaching and for the classes I am taking, I have been working as a parent. Studying grades, visiting with students, i.e. having discussions about make-up work and test re-takes, you know all of the stuff that makes being a parent fun.

I must admit, sometimes it can be a sticky situation, since my children tell me one thing and then a colleagues tell me other things, meaning the stories don’t always agree. Its difficult. In many ways I love having my kids here at school with me; I wouldn’t want to change it. Then, in other ways, such as the one discussed here, it would be so much easier if they were simply a teacher at another district school.

Its really much easier to treat it like a normal parent would by just emailing the teacher. I could easily talk to them at lunch, but why ruin lunch with talk of business? There’s enough of that going on at lunch anyway.

I’ll just keep trying to be a teacher/parent and make the best of it. After all, what more can anyone ask? Its all I ask of my own kids and my own students.

Thanks for reading.

Image courtesy of Learn Share Act

Again its time to count my blessings, so here goes.

I’ve lived in Oklahoma long enough now (12 years) that it feels like home. When I drive into Oklahoma City and see that familiar shape of the downtown skyline, I know I’ve made it. Getting in touch with my Okie side, I really enjoy watching shows on television about Oklahoma History. Specifically, the Dust Bowl era is a time period which is fascinating to me. My grandfather-in-law was an adolescent during that time and they did the whole “sharecroppers-riding the running boards-grapes of wrath-move to California sort of thing” way back then.

Tonight, while watching “An American Experience: Surviving the Dust Bowl“, I wondered, why am I so fortunate to live in the time in which I live? I mean, do we live in a time now, which future generations will look back on and be thankful they didn’t live through? It was interesting to hear the survivors (who were all little children in those days) say things like “what did we do to cause this” or “is this really going to be the end of the world?” That sentiment is in stark contrast to the prevailing attitudes of today, when we hear things like “that group over there has caused the woes of today” or “this is all so-and-so’s fault”.

I guess life really is all about your perspective. On this side of the Dust Bowl, it is easy to see what the causes were and how mankind contributed to the disaster. However, in those days, I’m sure it was overwhelming to consider surviving. I can imagine that families could only see the dust. Everything was obscured by the dust. Security, happiness, fellowship, the hood of the car (at times), all blotted out by the never-ending cloud of dust. I doubt they could see any other problems in life. I’m sure their mission in life, at that time, was just to survive.

So, why am I able to do so much more than survive? Why do I get to live in a great home, have a great job (doing something I love and am passionate about), work with interesting people, be blessed with a fantastic wife and two amazing kids? What did I ever do to deserve all this (and the myriad of blessings I am not listing here)?

Or, is the it that I didn’t do anything to deserve it? Is it more like there are some people who work to be happy and  then there are those who have happiness thrust upon them? (Did you get the “Night at the Museum” reference?) I think I have worked to be happy. I have worked hard to find a job doing something I love and about which I am passionate. Lord only knows I waited long enough. (In case you don’t know, I didn’t start teaching until I was 38 years old.) I work hard at my marriage. I have, and still do, put a lot of effort into the relationship I have with my children.

Image courtesy of Encyclopedia Brittanica

Maybe it is simply that I took a piece of advice my dad gave me way back when I was 18, on the day I was leaving to enter the Navy: “Son, I hope you will be content in whichever state you find yourself”. Of course I’m paraphrasing his exact words since he most likely would have ended the sentence with a preposition, but I digress. We both laughed about that little saying, since I was leaving for a different state that day. Both a different state literally and figuratively. That’s one piece of advice I have never forgotten and hopefully, I won’t ever.

I suppose what I am trying to say is this: Life is what you make of it. If you simply see dust all around you, so much so that you can’t see the hood of the car, you’ll probably live in the dust bowl your whole life. But if you consider that you are surrounded by people who care about you; people who may be going through the same lung-choking, blinding dust you are. Well then you have changed your perspective and things probably look a bit clearer. I constantly tell my students that physics is all about perspective. Newton’s 3rd Law (loosely translated into the Bowie version) states: You cannot push without being pushed. Basically, life will push back just as hard as you push. I think I’ll take a another piece of advice, this one given recently by one of my professors: “sometimes its best just to put a period and let the question be answered”.

I was working on an assignment for Ed Research tonight. I was required to create a questionnaire and while working on it, it hit me: Why not use google docs for this assignment? The other part of the assignment is to bring a transparency copy of the questionnaire, so the entire class can view it at our next meeting. Of course, my brain, left unchecked, went down the path to the end and I’ve chronicled that below.

We are a graduate level class, training to be National Board Certified teachers. We should be using every available technology resource at our disposal. Yet, we are using transparencies. Technology that has been around since 1945 and widely used in education since the late 1950’s. It gets my ire up when I see a blatant disregard of the use of free resources, especially in education. People whine and moan about not having the right tools to do the job, but, honestly there are many tools, which sit unused. We could very easily email a link to a googledoc to the professor, who could then show our questionnaire to the class through a computer projector. Instead, we will print out an actual transparency sheet. Yes, we will waste plastic. Good job. Way to be environmentally conscious, but that’s a whole other post. I won’t even go there.

So, here’s my question: Why not? Why does this particular program not embrace technology? Is it Tradition? Ignorance? Laziness? Honestly, I don’t know. I suspect its a combination of several of those issues.

These are not rhetorical questions. I really would like to find some answers. I want to affect change in the system. I’d like to find out why, in some sectors of higher education, technology is shunned and in others it is embraced. Is it strictly a professor’s preference? Is it program leadership? Is it discipline specific? If you know, I’d sure like to find out what you have to say.

I wonder if its too late to change my research question?

Check out the video and then go get out your Tesla Coil and light up some light bulbs or something! I can’t wait to get mine out in class. The students never forget it.