STEM Blog
Why Should I Study Physics if I Want to be a Doctor?
“What have you learned by taking physics?” This final homework assignment completely stymied my AP student. “What should I say?” she asked, imploringly. She had had to work really hard to do well in this class. Nothing about physics had been intuitively obvious to her. As her tutor, I had patiently explained and re-explained the…
How to Remain Sane in our Untethered Times
“The stage seems to be set for a global mental health crisis.” So proclaims MIT Technology Review this week. We can all understand this. The pandemic has uprooted everything that was routine. We don’t know what day of the week it is. We have no reason to get dressed, except from the waist up for…
Teaching Computer Ethics to our Youngsters
The concept of “etiquette” seems obsolete today. This quaint word conjures images of a Victorian ball, where gowned ladies in white gloves synchronously swirl with dandied dates to the strains of Strauss. Can a word with such anachronistic connotations have any relevance today? Webster’s pithy definition of etiquette is “the rules indicating the proper and…
The Challenges of Teaching AP Physics
The mathematician Gilbert Strang once quipped that the good thing about being a mathematician is that you’re not trained in any particular discipline. You speak an interlingua which allows you to make contributions in diverse fields, like physics, economics, and linguistics. Strang then added that the bad thing about being a mathematician is that you’re…
Why We Play Games
Everyone loves games. Little kids play simple games like Chutes and Ladders, Go Fish, and Hide-and-Seek. They play because it’s fun, blissfully unaware that they are learning important life lessons about taking turns, following the rules, and displaying empathy. Older children and adults play more sophisticated games, like Monopoly, Chess, and Go. They play these…
Moments of Silence are Golden: Making Them Meaningful
There is a delightful scene in the film Amadeus when the Emperor tells Mozart that his music is ingenious but contains “too many notes”. The Emperor suggests that Mozart needs only to “cut a few and it will be perfect”, at which point Mozart asks “which few did you have in mind, Majesty?” During this…
Keeping Kids Safe in Cyberspace
Cyberspace presents us all with opportunities for acquiring knowledge. Last week, we explored how playing video games can enhance spatial intelligence. But cyberspace also has its dark side. It provides online entities with the power to commoditize our private information, to mislead us with disinformation and propaganda, and to target the innocent and naïve for…
Leggo my Lego! Developing Spatial Intelligence for STEM Success
There’s a wonderful story about Lewis Terman, a psychologist instrumental in the development of IQ testing. In 1920, Terman began IQ testing of children, identifying those with scores above 135 as subjects of interest for future tracking. Two children, Luis Alvarez and William Shockley, took the test, but missed the cutoff for further consideration. Both…
Stop Freefalling: Building Affinity with Students in Cyberspace
The psychologists tell us that humans are born with only two fears: the fear of falling, and the fear of loud noises. Right now, many of us feel like we are in freefall without in-person social interactions. How well can Internet-connectedness fill this emotional emptiness? And how can you help? It was the norm before…
Inspiring Students in the Metaverse
The grand experiment began yesterday. In two weeks’ time, the SAT prep company had moved all classroom instruction from physical space to cyberspace. It was time to launch. Everyone was nervous. We needed this to work, and it did. The collective will of the company, the staff, the teachers, the students and their parents, made…
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