Introduction
This is your second “Report.” Hopefully you have reviewed the grade
Introduction
This is your second “Report.” Hopefully you have reviewed the grade on your first report to see what I’m expecting on these. Some of you also blew me away with such excellent reports on the first one that you got a partial bonus point- well done! If you have not yet done the first report, then go back and do it already!
As a reminder: We are doing these instead of exams because I think they are more useful, flexible, and interesting evaluation in this conceptual class. In addition it gives the opportunity to make these assessments more closely related to your daily life.
The report should be approximately 2-3 pages in length and should be double spaced. I’m not picky about font/formatting, I’m just trying to give you an idea of how much content there should be. I am not grading based on spelling or grammar either.
Prompt
The second section of this course has covered a much wider set of topics. We have seen:
Temperature, Heat, Thermal Energy Transmission, and Change of State
Vibrations, Waves, Sound, and Music
Electric Charge, Current, Voltage, and Power
Magnetism and Electromagnetism
Because these topics cover such a wide area, you are going to focus in on only one of those above bullet points. Pick one of those above sets of topics that interests you. Then you will investigate and find some way that it affects you in your personal life. This assignment will have several parts:
You will describe the object/scenario/experience in detail.What are you observing/experiencing? What object is it that uses the chosen topics. Which topics are relevant to the last month of physics?
Some examples:If you pick “Temperature, Heat, Thermal Energy Transmission, and Change of State” as your topic:ovens, outdoors temperature, thermometers (could be combined with electric thermometers and go into electricity), refrigerators, fires, radiation from the sun (solar panels cross over?), sweat keeping us cool, steam burning us etc
If you pick “Vibrations, Waves, Sound, and Music” as your topic:music/instruments, microphones/speakers, waves on a guitar or piano string, earth quakes, slinkies, ocean waves, touching liquid nitrogen etc
If you pick “Electric Charge, Current, Voltage, and Power” as your topic:I mean, just about anything. mechanical keyboards, microphone/speakers, computer screens, power supplies (like the power brick for your phone/laptop), lighting in a building- have you ever been in a big warehouse and they turn on/off the lights and they go one at a time? energy costs, CRT TVs, CT scans, inkjet printers, etc
If you pick “Magnetism and Electromagnetism” as your topic:again microphones/speakers, the big magnet scrapyards use for picking up large objects, magnetic locks/pistons, magnetic sensors, rail guns, wireless charging, etc
There are infinitely more things you could pick! If you’re ever unsure or in need of guidance, please message me via canvas.
It is important that you include in your description the reason why you have picked this topic. In what ways does it affect your daily life? Where, why, and how do you experience it?
For my example topic I will pick my microphone: I use it every class and office hour to communicate with you all! A microphone being an electric audio device it could fit in to several of the above categories. I’m going to approach it from the magnetism and electromagnetism angle.
You will describe how each part of the topic category applies to your experience/scenario/object/tool.In my example of dealing with the magnetic part of a microphone there is magnetism and electromagnetism. Because this only has 2 subtopics, I would beef it up by including a tiny bit about sound/electricity.Sound: The majority of the construction of a microphone is usually the membrane and magnet. The membrane is there to catch sound waves. Since sound waves are pressure waves they create areas of high pressure and low pressure. The high pressure areas will push against the membrane while the low pressure areas kind of “suck” and pull the membrane.
Magnetism: The membrane has a permanent magnet attached to it! This means that a magnet will be vibrated by the incoming sound waves. Vibrating the magnet means that the position of it’s overall magnetic field keeps moving. If you stare at a single point you would observe that the field is constantly changing at that point as the magnetic field moves about.
Electromagnetism: By wiggling this permanent magnet in front of a wire coil, the wire coil will pick up the vibrations in the magnetic field and produce current. This is exactly like how moving charges (or currents in wires) produce magnetic fields, but in reverse! The constantly changing magnetic field from the vibrating magnet will cause current in the wire.
Current: The amount of current in an electromagnet affects the strength of the magnet. Similarly, as the vibrating magnetic field gets stronger and weaker, the amount of induced current rises and falls. This pattern of rising and falling current can be turned in to sound either by a computer or a speaker!
For my example I would flesh out each of those bullet points as an entire paragraph, including a paragraph on why my microphone matters to me. That’s it. It will probably be around 2-ish pages (double spaced) in length. Each of those above subtopics should be 1-2 large paragraphs. If you find that your essay is coming up very short, consider if there aren’t any extra subtopics that you could add in- much like in my above example where I threw in a little sound and current.
That’s it! Let me know if you have any questions!