Your Guide to the Year in Science: 2010

The year has just begun and new scientific discoveries have just been made. Japanese researchers have discovered that part of the human genome has been inserted with a RNA virus over 40 million years ago. What other scientific discoveries does 2010 have in store for us?

Popular Science wrote an article that summarizes multiple topics that are promising for significant breakthroughs this year in the following fields:

1. Medicine
2. Space and Aviation
3. The Environment
4. Entertainment
5. Technology

Write two blog posts about two different topics. Each one needs to be in a different field so that you are not writing about two topics in the field of Technology. In your blog post include the following about each topic:

1. A brief summary of the topic. What is it? What field of research does it fall under?
2. What's the big deal with this topic? Why should you care about its developments and any new discoveries that are made?
3. What's going to happen to this topic in 2010?
4. What obstacles or setbacks are in the way of this topic's success?

Semester Academic Goals

What are you academic goals for this semester? Please write at least three specific academic goals that you have for Mysics class. Also include the first step that you will take toward reaching this goal. The format should be as follows:

Goal: Write the goal.
First Step: The first step you will take.

Example of non-specific goal: I want to get good grades.
Example of specific goal: I will ask for help when I don't understand something instead of not working.

The Origin of Zero

How can a number not exist? For that matter, how could the number zero not have existed when the number itself means nothing? Write a post that answers the following questions: What strikes you about the articles? How do we decide who discovers what? Who really discovered zero? Is it the person who came up with the concept of zero or the person who discovered the actual number? And how did the entire world come to a consensus without an efficient means of communication?

What is the origin of zero? How did we indicate nothingness before zero? by Robert Kaplan, Scientific American

The Origin of Zero by John Matson, Scientific American

The Boy Who Built A Windmill

The following video is an interview with William Kamkwamba at an annual TED convention. What strikes you? What about this individual is significant and what has he accomplished? What are your initial reactions? What was he inspired by? Why are we, as a country who already has electricity, interested in this man's accomplishments?

Mathematizing

I love it when students are inspired by a math problem and then create their own. My board was full of problems, patterns, and puzzles that my students generated.

The Locker Problem

The Locker Problem

You get to check out the new digs at HTHMars. The new school has these brand new state of the art expandable lockers. The HTH Village has been asked to test these lockers by opening and closing them. HTHMars has 1000 lockers, all shut.

• Suppose the first student goes along the row and opens every locker.
• The second student then goes along and shuts every other locker beginning with locker number 2.
• The third student changes the state of every third locker beginning with locker number 3. (If the locker is open the student shuts it, and if the locker is closed the student opens it.)
• The fourth student changes the state of every fourth locker beginning with number 4.

Imagine that this continues until 1000 students have followed the pattern with the 1000 lockers. At the end, which lockers will be open and which will be closed? Which lockers have been switched the most often? How many lockers, and which ones, were touched exactly five times?

My students were posed with this problem. After two weeks of solving, writing, and revising, they posted their final solutions on their blogs. Read their blogs and learn about perfect squares, factors, and patterns!

What is Math? What is Physics?

Math and physics mean different things to different people because we all have different experiences. What is it for you? Create a blog post that addresses the following questions:

What does it mean to do math? What does math look like? Where do you find math? Who uses it?

What is physics? Are we doing physics? Where can you find it? Who uses it?

This post should be at least two paragraphs and include a picture. This picture should be an example of how you see or view math and/or physics.