So I just confirmed the judges panel for the first annual Phylm Prize, and it’s packed full of talent. We have professors from Harvard and Tufts, TV professionals from both sides of the Atlantic, innovative digital educators, and even mad scientists. You can find a list of the judges and links on the competition’s main page at http://www.phylm.com. We’re all super excited to see what you come up with. So get working, and send us your stuff.
So last Thursday I broke up a fight on the football pitch, and after separating the students involved, I noticed about half a dozen camera phones documenting the whole thing. Friday morning the video was on YouTube, and that afternoon, by chance, I happened upon this posting over at learning.now about a This American Life video on a school-yard fad and its consequences–pretend video cameras. Watch the story, and you’ll understand. It definitely gives you something to think about.
Einstein may have believed God doesn’t play dice, but God need not conform to Einstein’s beliefs. This piece explores the phenomenon of quantum mechanical tunneling whose explanation requires us to accept the reality of quantum mechanics. It’s not a trick; it’s reality.
Update: People have been asking for the math. So here it is. The Sun’s core temp is ~13.6 MK. For hydrogen nuclei the Coulomb barrier is roughly 0.1 MeV. This corresponds to a temperature in excess of 1 GK! Luckily, tunneling and the distribution of speeds among nuclei lower the actual temperature required. So without tunneling even the Sun’s core isn’t hot enough for fusion. To see most of this worked through, check out this link: http://burro.cwru.edu/Academics/Astr221/StarPhys/coulomb.html
for a less mathematical explanation, try: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion#Requirements
In the movie Speed a bus is forced to jump an unfinished portion of highway to avoid setting off a bomb on the bus rigged to explode should it go below fifty miles an hour. Of course, they make it, but we want to know if this could really happen.
Viacom’s 1 Billion dollar YouTube lawsuit is not a repeat of Napster’s file sharing litigation. It is a battle over who calls the intellectual property game, corporations or the courts, and it is a test of the law whose resolution promises dramatic implications for free speech in the digital age. Unlike Napster, YouTube users are first and foremost content producers. Where it was hard to see legitimate uses for music sharing, YouTubers produce innumerable original and derivative works. What’s up for debate is how to deal with copyright violations when they occur. YouTube claims safe harbor protection under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Viacom alleges a business model built on the draw of illegal content. In the past week, I’ve heard noise from both camps, yet as an educator and vlogger, I am dismayed by what I haven’t heard enough—a defence of and respect for fair use. (more…)
Since I last blogged about refresh and censorship, things haven’t gotten any better. Our security was compromised, resulting in the posting of our students’ names, logins, and passwords on the web. I still don’t have a login, and the entire school network went down today. Unfortunately, our new contract with BT requires that all service go through them. So our senior management has been leaving phone messages all day long. That’s right, they couldn’t reach a real person. As of this afternoon, there was still no reply. We should have staff on site with the permissions and knowhow to handle these issues when they arise. Unfortunately, the BT contract precludes this. (more…)
High stakes testing threatens American education. Well-meaning politicians and communities frightened by a changing world risk hobbling the American educational system, producing a testing leviathan incapable of responding to the challenges of a global economy and destined for mediocrity. Six months ago I accepted a Fulbright teacher exchange to Edinburgh, Scotland, leaving the Bay State and my classroom in Lexington for the home of James Watt and Adam Smith. Now preparing my students for national exams, I think of their counterparts taking the MCAS, and I am compelled to warn of the dangers ahead. (more…)
A fast-paced time-laps demo of how to build your own electric motor, this segment was a lot of fun to make. I hope you enjoy it. Plus, you can now subscribe to the Tabletop Explainer via iTunes.
