NGSS Three dimensional learning
NGSS has three distinct components: 1. Disciplinary Core Ideas, 2. Cross Cutting Concepts, and 3. Science & Engineering Practices.
NGSS Three Dimensional Learning
Teaching Channel NGSS 3 dimensional teaching
KnowAtom’s blog – Explore the 3 Dimensions
A Way to Think About Three-Dimensional Learning and NGSS
From Carolina Biologica Supply Company,, by Dee Dee Whitaker
The National Research Council (NRC) went to science and engineering practitioners and gathered information on how they “do” science and engineering. That information was organized and the resulting framework is the Next Generation Science Standards.
- What scientists do is Dimension 1: Practices
- Concepts applied to all domains of science is Dimension 2: Crosscutting Concepts
- Big, important concepts for students to master is Dimension 3: Disciplinary Core Ideas
Each dimension is further refined into specific behaviors, concepts, and ideas. Below is a list of the three dimensions with an accompanying explanation and a brief rationale for each.
| Phenomenon
Naturally occurring events. Use phenomena to generate interest and elicit questions. |
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| Scientific and Engineering Practices
Practices: behaviors that scientists engage
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Disciplinary Core Ideas
The broad, key ideas within a scientific discipline make up the core ideas. The core ideas are distributed among 4 domains:
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Crosscutting Concepts
Applicable to all science disciplines, crosscutting concepts link the disciplines together.
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| Artifacts
Tangible evidence of demonstrated student learning. Artifacts need to be durable. A report, poster, project, and an audio recording of a presentation can all serve as artifacts. |
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Resources from New York City
New Visions for public schools – High School Science
New Visions for public schools – High School Biology – Designed to NGSS
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Moons
What is a “moon”?
A moon is a naturally occurring body in space that is orbiting a planet. A moon is also known as a natural satellite.
Surprisingly, there historically never was a precise definition for what constitutes a moon.
Earth has one moon, which is almost large enough to be a planet in its own right.
There are more than 200 other known objects in our solar system also called moons. Some are similar to our own moon, but most are wildly different.
Most of the major planets – all except Mercury and Venus – have moons. Pluto and some other dwarf planets, as well as many asteroids, also have small moons. Saturn and Jupiter have dozens of moons orbiting each of them.
Moons come in many shapes, sizes, and types. A few have atmospheres and even hidden oceans beneath their surfaces.
Most planetary moons probably formed from the discs of gas and dust circulating around planets in the early solar system, though some are “captured” objects that formed elsewhere and fell into orbit around larger worlds.
This intro from What is a moon?, NASA, Solar System Exploration
Moons of solar system v5, Wikimedia
Earth’s moon, Luna, as seen from Earth, over the course of a month.
Lunar libration with phase
How did we discover the existence of natural satellites?
(This section adapted from Wikipedia)
Interestingly, the Moon was called a “planet” until Copernicus’ publication of De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1543.
Until the discovery of the Galilean satellites around Jupiter, in 1610, there was no opportunity for referring to such objects as a class.
Galileo chose to refer to his discoveries as Planetæ (“planets”.)
It was only later discoverers who chose other terms to distinguish them from the objects they orbited.
The first to use of the term satellite to describe orbiting bodies was the German astronomer Johannes Kepler in 1610.
The term satellite became the normal one for referring to an object orbiting a planet, as it avoided the ambiguity of the word “moon”. In 1957, however, the launching of the artificial object Sputnik created a need for new terminology.
The terms man-made satellite and artificial moon were very quickly abandoned in favor of the simpler satellite. As a consequence, the term satellite has become linked with artificial objects flown in space – including, sometimes, even those not in orbit around a planet.
Because of this shift in meaning, the term “moon” has regained respectability and is now used interchangeably with natural satellite, even in scientific articles.
To avoid ambiguity, the convention is to capitalize the word Moon when referring to Earth’s natural satellite, but not when referring to other natural satellites.
Moons of Mars
The two moons of Mars are Phobos and Deimos. They are irregular in shape and are likely asteroids that were captured by Mars.
They are named after the Greek mythological twin characters Phobos (fear) and Deimos (terror and dread) who accompanied their father Ares into battle. Ares, god of war, was known to the Romans as Mars.
Mars and its moons, 3D visualization
https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model/842a9cd440523cc16a12484fa9d9be10/Mars-and-Its-Moons
Jupiter
A pull-out from Jupiter Showing Moon Orbits, showing 63 moons.
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3604
Jupiter And The Galilean moons
https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model/4f2aab4fa1a0850a6a12484fa9d9be10/Jupiter-And-The-Galilean-moons
Saturn
Saturn and its major moons
https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model/2e2ae7843d1732a6a12484fa9d9be10/Saturn-And-Its-Major-Moons
Uranus
Uranus and its major moons
https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model/9be003941707a7db6a12484fa9d9be10/Uranus-and-Its-Major-Moons
Neptune
Neptune and its major moon Triton
Neptune and its rings
https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model/d1bb9acea44c252e6a12484fa9d9be10/Neptune-and-Its-Rings
Pluto and its moon Charon
https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model/75066f0b918e77c76a12484fa9d9be10/Pluto-and-Its-Moon-Charon
Astronomical engineering: a strategy for modifying planetary orbits
In a world of high-stakes testing and test-driven curriculums, we teachers need to make time for exploration and inspiration. In the past, did students fall in love with physics due to standardized tests? Of course not. They became interested in becoming a physicist due to great experience, like reading a great science fiction story, or having a science teacher discuss such stories in class, Such conversations about the big ideas can catch one’s imagination.
As such, I encourage physics teachers to go beyond the standards, and do what the classic teachers of past generations did: make room for wonder!
How’s this for an idea for a science-fiction story?
The sun has unexpectedly started to swell into a red giant – which would engulf and destroy the Earth. So, “to save humanity, the world’s governments have banded together and constructed thousands of rocket engines across the Earth’s surface. Once installed, they propel the planet out of its solar system and onto a 2,500 year journey to resettle in Alpha Centauri.” (Grant Watson.)
The Wandering Earth (Chinese: 流浪地球) is a 2019 Chinese science fiction film directed by Frant Gwo, loosely based on the novella of the same name by author Liu Cixin. Here’s an image of one of the many “Earth Engines.”
Our question – Could this be done in real life?
What science in the film did they get wrong?
Helium flash – brief thermal runaway nuclear fusion of large quantities of helium in the core of low mass stars during their red giant phase
Thrusting the Earth out of orbit with rockets: consider, how much reaction mass would we need to do this?
Even if you could build engines large enough, mining the Earth (as these engines do in the film) causes a problem. There would barely be any Earth left by the point you mined enough dirt to thrust the planet to Proxima Centauri, 4.2 light-years away. “It would take about 95 percent of the mass of Earth to do this,” Elliott estimates.
Stopping the rotation of the Earth?
Gravitational slingshot around Jupiter
Surviving the radiation around Jupiter
External links
Could ‘The Wandering Earth’ Actually Happen? Here’s What a NASA Engineer Says
Wandering Earth: Rocket scientist explains how we could move our planet. ARS Technia
Other options
We could eventually move human civilization to Mars, which become habitable.
Could we actually change Earth’s orbit?
G. Korycansky, Gregory Laughlin, and Fred C. Adams write
The Sun’s gradual brightening will seriously compromise the Earth’s biosphere within ~ 1E9 years. If Earth’s orbit migrates outward, however, the biosphere could remain intact over the entire main-sequence lifetime of the Sun.
In this paper, we explore the feasibility of engineering such a migration over a long time period. The basic mechanism uses gravitational assists to (in effect) transfer orbital energy from Jupiter to the Earth, and thereby enlarges the orbital radius of Earth.
This transfer is accomplished by a suitable intermediate body, either a Kuiper Belt object or a main belt asteroid. The object first encounters Earth during an inward pass on its initial highly elliptical orbit of large (~ 300 AU) semimajor axis.
The encounter transfers energy from the object to the Earth in standard gravity-assist fashion by passing close to the leading limb of the planet. The resulting outbound trajectory of the object must cross the orbit of Jupiter; with proper timing, the outbound object encounters Jupiter and picks up the energy it lost to Earth.
With small corrections to the trajectory, or additional planetary encounters (e.g., with Saturn), the object can repeat this process over many encounters. To maintain its present flux of solar energy, the Earth must experience roughly one encounter every 6000 years (for an object mass of 1E22 g). We develop the details of this scheme and discuss its ramifications.
Astrophys.Space Sci.275:349-366, 2001. Astronomical Engineering: A Strategy For Modifying Planetary Orbits
Cite as: arXiv:astro-ph/0102126 (or arXiv:astro-ph/0102126v1 for this version)
Astronomical engineering: a strategy for modifying planetary orbits
D. G. Korycansky, Gregory Laughlin, Fred C. Adams (7 Feb 2001)
Moving our sun and entire solar system
Could a species conceivably move an entire solar system? In principle, physics does seem to allow this as a possibility. Although, we must stress, the engineering required to do this is far beyond anything we can imagine for the near term future, and even if possible it would take huge amounts of time to actually move our solar system.
The Caplan thruster was conceived of by Matthew Caplan from Illinois State University.
These images are from How to Move the Sun: Stellar Engines by Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell.
and
from Scientist figures out how to move our sun to avoid space collisions, BigThink
Stellar engines: Design considerations for maximizing acceleration, Acta Astronautica, 12/2019
Paul Ratner writes
Caplan envisions two stellar engine designs, with one of them based on the idea of encapsulating the sun in a megastructure that would take advantage of its energy. Another engine would make use of a giant sail to move the solar system by about 50 light years during the course of a million years….
One big reason would be to move the solar system if we’re anticipating running into a mega-explosion from a supernova or some such cataclysmic scenario. Of course, we’d need to be way more ahead technologically for any such endeavor.
If you were to be moving the solar system, the convenient thing is that theoretically everything inside it would move along at the same time. Being pulled by the sun’s gravity would keep the contents of the system in consistent orbit.
One of the stellar engine designs involves a thin mirror-like solar sail, like the “Shkladov thruster”. The reflective material would be thinner than a red blood cell. The sail would be positioned over the poles of the sun and would not be orbiting.
It would be important to install it in such a way that it won’t interfere with the Earth’s temperature. This would also affect the direction in which we’d be steering the solar system.
Thrust for the sail design would be created by solar radiation reflecting onto the mega-mirror. This is definitely not the fastest way to travel, with the sun being pushed along at the rate of 100 light-year in 230 million years. That’s actually not fast enough to get out of the way of a supernova explosion, admits Caplan.
What would work better is a speedier “active” thruster, called the “Caplan thruster” by Kurzgesagt, which initially approached Caplan to design such engines. It would be propelled by thermonuclear blasts of photon particles. This thruster is a modified version of the “Bussard ramjet,” conceptualized in the 1960s, which works on fusion energy.
The engine would need millions of tons of fuel per second to function, creating fusion from matter it collects in the solar wind by utilizing a giant electromagnetic field. More energy would also be gathered by a Dyson sphere megastructure, built around the sun.
Caplan imagines the engine having two jets, with one using hydrogen pointed at the sun, to prevent colliding with it, and another, employing helium, directed away from the star. This would cause net momentum, like from a tug boat, and move the thruster forward.
The astrophysicist calculates this type of thruster would be fast enough to escape a supernova. It could also redirect the galactic orbit of our solar system in as little as 10 million years.
The Shkadov Thruster was conceived of by Leonid M. Shkadov (1927–2003) scientist, engineer from the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute in Russia.
Excerpted from a painting by Neil Blevans
Painting above from here.
Related articles
Gregory Benford and Larry Niven solved the problems with Shkavdov thrusters for a propulsion system for moving stars
“On the Possibility of Detecting Class A Stellar Engines Using Exoplanet Transit Curves,” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society
See this video
Learning Standards
2016 Massachusetts Science and Technology/Engineering Curriculum Framework
8.MS-ESS1-2. Explain the role of gravity in ocean tides, the orbital motions of planets, their moons, and asteroids in the solar system.
HS-PS2-4. Use mathematical representations of Newton’s law of gravitation and Coulomb’s law to both qualitatively and quantitatively describe and predict the effects of gravitational and electrostatic forces between objects.
Next Generation Science Standards
HS-PS2.B.1 ( High School Physical Sciences ): Newton’s law of universal gravitation and Coulomb’s law provide the mathematical models to describe and predict the effects of gravitational and electrostatic forces between distant objects.
Next Generation Science Standards Appendix F: Science and Engineering Practices
Ask questions that arise from careful observation of phenomena, or unexpected results, to clarify and/or seek additional information.
Ask questions that arise from examining models or a theory, to clarify and/or seek additional information and relationships.
Ask and/or evaluate questions that challenge the premise(s) of an argument, the interpretation of a data set, or the suitability of a design.
A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas (2012)
PS2.B: TYPES OF INTERACTIONS: Gravitational, electric, and magnetic forces between a pair of objects do not require that they be in contact. These forces are explained by force fields that contain energy and can transfer energy through space. These fields can be mapped by their effect on a test object (mass, charge, or magnet, respectively). Objects with mass are sources of gravitational fields and are affected by the gravitational fields of all other objects with mass. Gravitational forces are always attractive. For two human-scale objects, these forces are too small to observe without sensitive instrumentation. Gravitational interactions are non-negligible, however, when very massive objects are involved. Thus the gravitational force due to Earth, acting on an object near Earth’s surface, pulls that object toward the planet’s center. Newton’s law of universal gravitation provides the mathematical model to describe and predict the effects of gravitational forces between distant objects.
The water cycle and atmospheric rivers
From NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
The water cycle is often taught as a simple circular cycle of evaporation, condensation, and precipitation.
Although this can be a useful model, the reality is much more complicated. The paths and influences of water through Earth’s ecosystems are extremely complex and not completely understood.
Image from NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Liquid water evaporates into water vapor, condenses to form clouds, and precipitates back to earth in the form of rain and snow.
Water in different phases moves through the atmosphere (transportation).
Liquid water flows across land (runoff), into the ground (infiltration and percolation), and through the ground (groundwater).
Groundwater moves into plants (plant uptake) and evaporates from plants into the atmosphere (transpiration).
Solid ice and snow can turn directly into gas (sublimation).
The opposite can also take place when water vapor becomes solid (deposition).
Atmospheric river
Atmospheric rivers are relatively long, narrow regions in the atmosphere – like rivers in the sky – that transport most of the water vapor outside of the tropics.
These columns of vapor move with the weather, carrying an amount of water vapor roughly equivalent to the average flow of water at the mouth of the Mississippi River. When the atmospheric rivers make landfall, they often release this water vapor in the form of rain or snow.
Although atmospheric rivers come in many shapes and sizes, those that contain the largest amounts of water vapor and the strongest winds can create extreme rainfall and floods, often by stalling over watersheds vulnerable to flooding.
These events can disrupt travel, induce mudslides and cause catastrophic damage to life and property.
A well-known example is the “Pineapple Express,” a strong atmospheric river that is capable of bringing moisture from the tropics near Hawaii over to the U.S. West Coast.
Not all atmospheric rivers cause damage; most are weak systems that often provide beneficial rain or snow that is crucial to the water supply. Atmospheric rivers are a key feature in the global water cycle and are closely tied to both water supply and flood risks — particularly in the western United States.
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Difference between weather and climate
From The National Center for Atmospheric Research and UCAR Office of Programs
https://eo.ucar.edu/kids/green/what1.htm
What is the difference between weather and climate? Weather is what the forecasters on the TV news predict each day. They tell people about the temperature, cloudiness, humidity, and whether a storm is likely in the next few days.
Weather is the mix of events that happens each day in our atmosphere. Weather is not the same everywhere. It may be hot and sunny in one part of the world, but freezing and snowy in another.
Climate is the average weather in a place over many years.
While the weather can change in just a few hours, climate takes hundreds, even thousands of years to change.
Explanation by Neil deGrasse Tyson
From Neil deGrasse Tyson ShowsWeather Is Not Climate With One Very Simple Demonstration, The Huffington Post, Sarah Barness
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/02/weather-versus-climate-change-cosmos-video_n_5432366.html
“Weather is what the atmosphere does in the short-term, hour-to-hour, day-to-day,” the “Cosmos” host explains in the clip above. “Weather is chaotic, which means that even a microscopic disturbance can lead to large scale changes. That’s why those 10-day weather forecasts are useless … Climate is the long-term average of the weather over a number of years. It’s shaped by global forces that alter the energy balance in the atmosphere, such as changes in the sun, tilt of the Earth’s axis, the amount of sunlight the Earth reflects back into space and the concentration of greenhouse gasses in the air.”
Weather Versus Climate Change | Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (YouTube)
[In this video] Tyson compares weather to the irregular, sporadic pattern of his dog. Though it’s difficult to predict where the dog is going, we can know the range of his meandering because he’s on a leash. Conversely, Tyson’s straight path is like the climate, which is broadly predictable by observing long-term changes in global forces. Both man and dog have their own patterns, but both are going in the same direction.
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How reliable are genetic ancestry tests?
How reliable are genetic ancestry tests/genealogical DNA testing?
Sample report from 23AndMe
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What is the technology?
tba
Why would people want to do this?
Learn about family history
Learn about susceptibility to diseases (Parkinson’s, Cancer)
Predicting Side Effects of Pharmaceuticals
Are we really of only the heritage that we think we are from?
If you’re black, DNA ancestry results can reveal an awkward truth, Splinter News, 2016
What companies are offering these tests?
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23andMe, personal genomics and biotechnology company, Mountain View, CA
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Affymetrix
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AncestryDNA
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Family Tree DNA
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MyHeritageDNA
Ethical issues
privacy
genetic counseling
Example: Tay Sachs
Five Things to Know about Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Tests. Johns Hopkins Medicine.
Alzheimer’s Society’s view on genetic testing
How reliable is the interpretation of the data?
Intro tba
How DNA Testing Botched My Family’s Heritage, and Probably Yours, Too, Gizmodo, 2018
How Accurate Are Online DNA Tests? Scientific American
Genetic tests are everywhere, but how reliable are they? Boston Globe
Pulling Back the Curtain on DNA Ancestry Tests. Tufts University
What genetic tests from 23andMe, Veritas and Genos really told me about my health. Science News
Articles from scientific journals
Why is the interpretation of the data often wrong?
The accuracy of the interpretations will get better over time. But for now they are not great. Why not?
Kristen V. Brown writes:
Four tests, four very different answers about where my DNA comes from—including some results that contradicted family history I felt confident was fact. What gives?
There are a few different factors at play here. Genetics is inherently a comparative science: Data about your genes is determined by comparing them to the genes of other people.
As Adam Rutherford, a British geneticist and author of the excellent book “A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived,” explained to me, we’ve got a fundamental misunderstanding of what an ancestry DNA test even does.
“They’re not telling you where your DNA comes from in the past,” he told me, “They’re telling you where on Earth your DNA is from today.”
Ancestry, for example, had determined that my Aunt Cat was 30 percent Italian by comparing her genes to other people in its database of more than six million people, and finding presumably that her genes had a lot of things in common with the present-day people of Italy.
Heritage DNA tests are more accurate for some groups of people than others, depending how many people with similar DNA to yours have already taken their test. Ancestry and 23andMe have actually both published papers about how their statistical modeling works.
As Ancestry puts it: “When considering AncestryDNA estimates of genetic ethnicity it is important to remember that our estimates are, in fact, estimates. The estimates are variable and depend on the method applied, the reference panel used, and the other customer samples included during estimation.”
That the data sets are primarily made up of paying customers also skews demographics. If there’s only a small number of Middle Eastern DNA samples that your DNA has been matched against, it’s less likely you’ll get a strong Middle Eastern match.
from gizmodo How-dna-testing-botched-my-familys-heritage-and-probably yours, 2018
Further reading
Understanding genetic testing: U.S. National Library of Medicine
Learning Standards
HS-LS1-1. Construct a model of transcription and translation to explain the roles of DNA and RNA that code for proteins that regulate and carry out essential functions of life.
HS-LS3-1. Develop and use a model to show how DNA in the form of chromosomes is passed from parents to offspring through the processes of meiosis and fertilization in sexual reproduction.
HS-LS3-2. Make and defend a claim based on evidence that genetic variations (alleles) may result from (a) new genetic combinations via the processes of crossing over and random segregation of chromosomes during meiosis, (b) mutations that occur during replication, and/or (c) mutations caused by environmental factors. Recognize that mutations that occur in gametes can be passed to offspring.
HS-LS3-3. Apply concepts of probability to represent possible genotype and phenotype combinations in offspring caused by different types of Mendelian inheritance patterns.
HS-LS3-4(MA). Use scientific information to illustrate that many traits of individuals, and the presence of specific alleles in a population, are due to interactions of genetic factors
and environmental factors.
Black holes: Videos
A CURIOUS WORLD: BLACK HOLES: What are black holes made of and how do they work?
https://vimeopro.com/pixelduststudios/zhm/video/118306264
NOVA search
https://video.ideastream.org/search/?q=black+hole
Rebuilding the Interstellar Black Hole
https://video.ideastream.org/video/shanks-fx-interstellar/
Black holes are not as black as we once thought. They are theorized to die a slow death by evaporation, emitting energy known as Hawking radiation.
https://video.ideastream.org/video/physics-girl-black-hole/
What’s inside a black hole?
https://video.ideastream.org/video/whats-inside-black-hole-i4mr7n/
Four types of black holes
https://video.ideastream.org/video/four-types-black-holes-vsg1rq/
PBS NOVA: Black Hole Apocalypse. Season 45, Episode 1
“Black holes are the most enigmatic and exotic objects in the universe. They’re also the most powerful, with gravity so strong it can actually trap light. And they’re destructive. Anything that falls into them vanishes…gone forever. But now, astrophysicists are realizing that black holes may be essential to understanding how our universe unfolded.”
https://www.pbs.org/video/black-hole-apocalypse-yj34qi/
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/black-hole-apocalypse/
https://www.thirteen.org/programs/nova/black-hole-apocalypse-yj34qi/
Protecting New Orleans from rising water levels
New Orleans, Louisiana
This is a placeholder blogpost. The article is to be written
Map: Google Maps. Photos by Mary Grace McKernan; infographic: by Marc Fusco.
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Image by Midnightcomm for Wikipedia, public domain.
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Apps & Interactive graphics
Louisiana’s Sea Level Is Rising: SeaLevelRise.org
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Articles
Fortified But Still In Peril, New Orleans Braces for Its Future: In the years after Hurricane Katrina, over 350 miles of levees, flood walls, gates and pumps came to encircle greater New Orleans. Experts say that is not enough.
By John Schwartz and Mark Schleifstein, 2/24/2018
Fortified But Still In Peril, New Orleans Braces for Its Future
After a $14-Billion Upgrade, New Orleans’ Levees Are Sinking. Sea level rise and ground subsidence will render the flood barriers inadequate in just four years. By Thomas Frank, E&E News, Scientific American, 4/11,/2019
After a $14-Billion Upgrade, New Orleans’ Levees Are Sinking. Scientific American
Rising Sea Levels May Limit New Orleans Adaptation Efforts. New Orleans sees that even modern engineering cannot eliminate flooding risk. By Emily Holden, ClimateWire on September 10, 2015. Scientific American.
Rising Sea Levels May Limit New Orleans Adaptation Efforts. Scientific American
Fortified but still in peril, New Orleans braces for its future: Our Drowning Coast. By Mark Schleifstein | Posted February 24, 2018.
Fortified but still in peril, New Orleans braces for its future
Rising sea to displace 500,000 New Orleans area residents, study says; see where they might go. By Tristan Baurick, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. 4/20/2017.
A study published this week (April 2017) predicts that sea level rise will push hundreds of thousands of people out of U.S. coastal cities such as New Orleans. It says the population will boom in nearby inland cities such as Austin. The University of Georgia study is considered the first detailed look at how inland cities might be affected by sea level rise. It estimates more than than 500,000 people will flee the seven-parish New Orleans area by 2100 due to sea level rise and the problems that come with it, including frequent flooding and greater exposure to storm surges. That’s more than one third of metro New Orleans’s current population…. Across the United States, the study estimates, 13 million people will be displaced by sea level rise under a scenario in which some efforts are taken to mitigate the impacts of sea level rise. The biggest draw, it predicts, will be Austin, gaining 600,00 to 800,000 people on top of the metro area’s current estimated population of 2.1 million. Other inland cities likely to grow substantially include Orlando, Fla., Atlanta and Phoenix.
Rising sea to displace 500,000 New Orleans area residents, study says. NOLA.com
Migration induced by sea-level rise could reshape the US population landscape
Mathew E. Hauer. Nature Climate Change volume 7, pages 321–325 (2017)
Many sea-level rise (SLR) assessments focus on populations presently inhabiting vulnerable coastal communities, but to date no studies have attempted to model the destinations of these potentially displaced persons. With millions of potential future migrants in heavily populated coastal communities, SLR scholarship focusing solely on coastal communities characterizes SLR as primarily a coastal issue, obscuring the potential impacts in landlocked communities created by SLR-induced displacement. Here I address this issue by merging projected populations at risk of SLR with migration systems simulations to project future destinations of SLR migrants in the United States. I find that unmitigated SLR is expected to reshape the US population distribution, potentially stressing landlocked areas unprepared to accommodate this wave of coastal migrants—even after accounting for potential adaptation. These results provide the first glimpse of how climate change will reshape future population distributions and establish a new foundation for modelling potential migration destinations from climate stressors in an era of global environmental change.
Science teaching methods
“Pedagogy is the study of teaching methods, including the aims of education and the ways in which such goals may be achieved. The field relies heavily on educational psychology, which encompasses scientific theories of learning, and to some extent on the philosophy of education, which considers the aims and value of education from a philosophical perspective.”
~ Encyclopædia Britannica
What type of teaching works with NGSS?
No one model of pedagogy is best for every topic or every teacher. Different teachers are enthusiastic about different approaches. Experienced science teachers change the mode of instruction to match the phenomenon which they are presenting.
Philip Bell and Andrew Shouse write
People often assume that a particular instructional model is best for engaging students in the NGSS practices. In fact, there are multiple models that can be used effectively.
NGSS and the underlying NRC Framework do not say anywhere that there is only one instructional approach for engaging students in the practices. But specific curricula, instructional resources, and PD can reinforce this view by focusing on only one model at a time. There are actually multiple instructional models that can be productively used to implement the learning goals of NGSS.
Explore the practice-focused instructional models listed in the table and select one(s) that fit your situation and personal preferences.
Selecting an instructional model that fits a particular classroom should be based on local circumstances. This can involve supporting instruction that fits a teacher’s personal history, goals, or commitments. Or it can be based on what instructional model is in use in the local curriculum. The district’s or school’s instructional strategy or a professional learning community may also shape teachers’ orientation to an instructional model.
From Are there multiple instructional models that fit with the science and engineering practices in NGSS?, STEM Teaching Tools
Image by Gerd Altmann, Pixabay, Free for commercial use
Flipped classroom
The flipped classroom intentionally shifts instruction to a learner-centered model. Students take responsibility to learn the content at home, usually through video lessons prepared by the teacher or third parties, and readings from textbooks. In-class lessons include activity learning, homework problems, using manipulatives, doing labs, presentations, project-based learning, skill development, etc.
An early example of this was called Peer Instruction by Harvard Professor Eric Mazur, in the early 1990s.
Just-in-Time Teaching
There is no hard line between approaches Just-In-Time teaching may be considered halfway between traditional teaching methods and the flipped classroom.
JiTT relies on pre-class assignments completed by students before class meetings. These assignments are usually completed online. The pre-class assignments cover the material that will be introduced in the subsequent class, and should be answered based on students’ reading or other preparation. The idea is to create incentive for students to complete the assigned reading before class. At college level, teachers make the pre-class assignment due at least 1 hour before class. This allows the faculty member to review the students’ answers before class.
Apps/interactive simulations
Science apps are sometimes called Physlets, Chemlets, etc. In the past many ran on Flash or JAVA. Today they are increasingly being written to run on any browser with HTML5 standards.
Apps help make the visual and conceptual models of expert scientists accessible to students.
Example: PhET Interactive Simulations
Classroom response systems (“clickers”)
A classroom response system (sometimes called a personal response system, student response system, or audience response system) is a set of hardware and software that facilitates teaching activities such as the following.
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A teacher poses a multiple-choice question via an overhead or computer projector.
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Each student submits an answer to the question using a clicker.
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Software collects the answers and produces a bar chart showing how many students chose each of the answer choices.
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The teacher makes “on the fly” choices in response to the bar chart.
Ranking Task Exercises
Conceptual physics exercises that challenges readers to make comparative judgments about a set of variations on a particular physical situation. Exercises encourage readers to formulate their own ideas about the behavior of a physical system, correct any misconceptions they may have, and build a better conceptual foundation of physics.
Interactive Lecture Demonstrations
See Interactive Lecture Demonstrations, Active Learning in Introductory Physics, by David Sokoloff and Ronald Thornton.
Start with a scripted activity in a traditional lecture format. Because the activity causes students to confront their prior understanding of a core concept, students are ready to learn in a follow-up lecture.
Interactive Lecture Demonstrations use three steps in which students:
Predict the outcome of the demonstration. Individually, and then with a partner, students explain to each other which of a set of possible outcomes is most likely to occur.
Experience the demonstration. Working in small groups, students conduct an experiment, take a survey, or work with data to determine whether their initial beliefs were confirmed (or not).
Reflect on the outcome. Students think about why they held their initial belief and in what ways the demonstration confirmed or contradicted this belief. After comparing these thoughts with other students, students individually prepare a written product on what was learned.
https://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/demonstrations/index.html
GIFs as step-by-step animations
Textbooks and lectures use static diagrams. For many students it is hard to visualize the scientific process being taught. GIFs help students visualize a complex process.
GIFs add to our toolbook. For instance, one can model an electric series circuit with two resistors in many ways. We can model this circuit with math, with a circuit diagram, or with a GIF. With the GIF we can see how the battery adds potential energy to the electrons in a circuit, while the electrons lose this potential energy as they go through any circuit element with resistance.
https://www.stem.org.uk/news-and-views/opinions/using-gifs-classroom
http://blog.cdnsciencepub.com/science-communicators-get-your-gif-on/
http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/makingsciencepublic/2014/01/24/how-to-do-things-with-gifs/
Cooperative group problem solving
Cooperative Group Problem-solving – Students work in groups using structured problem-solving strategy. In this way they can solve complex, context-rich problems which could be difficult for them to solve individually.
Students in introductory physics courses typically begin to solve a problem by plunging into the algebraic and numerical solution — they search for and manipulate equations, plugging numbers into the equations until they find a combination that yields an answer (e.g. the plug-and-chug strategy).
They seldom use their conceptual knowledge of physics to qualitatively analyze the problem situation, nor do they systematically plan a solution before they begin numerical and algebraic manipulations of equations. When they arrive at an answer, they are usually satisfied — they rarely check to see if the answer makes sense.
To help students integrate the conceptual and procedural aspects of problem solving so they could become better problem solvers, we introduced a structured, five-step problem solving strategy.
5E Model (a modelling method)
The 5E model is a constructivist science learning method created in the late 1980s by the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS Science Learning) team. The method usually has 5 steps –
Engage, student’s interest is captured,
Explore, student constructs knowledge through facilitated questioning and observation
Explain, students are asked to explain what they have discovered. Instructor leads discussion of topic to refine the students’ understanding.
Extend (Elaborate), students asked to apply what they have learned to different situations,
Evaluate.
Tutorials in Introductory Physics
Guided-inquiry worksheets for small groups in recitation section of intro calculus-based physics. Instructors engage groups in Socratic dialogue.
RealTime Physics
A series of introductory laboratory modules that use computer data acquisition tools to help students develop physics concepts and acquire lab skills.
Modeling Instruction
Instruction organized around active student construction of conceptual and mathematical models in an interactive learning community. Students engage with simple scenarios to build, test and apply the handful of scientific models that represent the content core of physics.
Force Concept Inventory
“The FCI is a test of conceputal understanding of Newtonian mechanics, developed from the late 1980s. It consists of 30 MCQ questions with 5 answer choices for each question and tests student understanding of conceptual understanding of velocity, acceleration and force. Many distracters in the test items embody commonsense beliefs about the nature of force and its effect on motion. ”
Developed by Hestenes, Halloun, Wells, and Swackhamer (1985.) Sample question:
Problem with relying solely on modeling methods
The major issues with relying solely on modeling methods, such as 5E, is that if we really followed this methodology for all topics then it would take many years to get a student through one year of a high school science class.
After all, it took some of the world’s smartest people 2,000 years of intellectual exploration to notice and understand the scientific phenomenon that make up just a one year high school science course.
There is no hope of having most high school students do all the steps in 5E for more than a small percent of physics, chemistry, or biology phenomenon in just one year.
When in science teacher discussion communities I haven’t found many people who advocated for year-long modeling as the sole or primary way to teach. The push for these methods seems to come from massive, for-profit, textbook publishing companies. They sell various 5E and NGSS labeled curricula. Older teachers have noticed that these companies always dump their own curricula and replace it with a new one every 15 years or so.
To be clear – I am not critiquing anyone who uses modeling teaching. I just am saying that there is not enough time for students to discover every phenomenon. We also need some traditional instruction: assigning reading and lecturing.
Different types of learners?
Daniel T. Willingham writes:
Question: What does cognitive science tell us about the existence of visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners and the best way to teach them?
The idea that people may differ in their ability to learn new material depending on its modality—that is, whether the child hears it, sees it, or touches it—has been tested for over 100 years. And the idea that these differences might prove useful in the classroom has been around for at least 40 years.
What cognitive science has taught us is that children do differ in their abilities with different modalities, but teaching the child in his best modality doesn’t affect his educational achievement. What does matter is whether the child is taught in the content’s best modality.
See more at Do Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Learners Need Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Instruction?
External resources
www.physport.org Teaching Methods
How to teach AP Physics
ASU Modeling Instruction modeling.asu.edu/R&E/Research.html
The Drake Equation
“The Drake Equation is a way to estimate the number of communicating advanced civilizations (N) inhabiting the Galaxy. It is named after Frank Drake who first summarized the things we need to know to answer the question, ‘how many of them are out there?’
The equation breaks this big unknown, complex question into several smaller (hopefully manageable) parts. Once you know how to deal with each of the pieces, you can put them together to come up with a decent guess.”
– Nick Strobel, Astronomy Notes
The Drake equation is shown below. What do the terms mean?
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N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible.
and
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R∗ = the average rate of star formation in our Galaxy
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fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets
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ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
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fl = the fraction of planets that could support life that actually develop life at some point
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fi = the fraction of planets with life that actually go on to develop intelligent life (civilizations)
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fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
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L = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space
Image from universetoday.com, drake-equation
Another infographic
Luciano Ingenito | CC by-nc-nd 4.0
Analysis
The Drake equation is really a summary of the factors affecting the likelihood that we might detect radio-communication from intelligent extraterrestrial life.
The last three parameters, fi, fc, and L, are not known and are very difficult to estimate, with values ranging over many orders of magnitude. Therefore, the usefulness of the Drake equation is not in the solving, but rather in the contemplation of concepts which scientists must think about when considering the question of life elsewhere.
The equation has helped draw attention to several scientific problems related to life in the universe, for example abiogenesis, the development of multi-cellular life, and the development of intelligence itself.
See The Drake Equation interactive PBS NOVA
Modifications to the Drake equations
This equation is a very simple model that omits potentially relevant parameters. Many modifications to the equation have been proposed.
The Drake equation doesn’t include some concept that might be relevant to the odds of contacting other civilizations.
Colonization
It has been proposed to generalize the Drake equation to include additional effects of alien civilizations colonizing other star systems. Each original site expands with an expansion velocity v, and establishes additional sites that survive for a lifetime L. The result is a more complex set of 3 equations.
Reappearance factor
The Drake equation may furthermore be multiplied by how many times an intelligent civilization may occur on planets where it has happened once. Even if an intelligent civilization reaches the end of its lifetime after, for example, 10,000 years, life may still prevail on the planet for billions of years, permitting the next civilization to evolve.
METI factor
Alexander Zaitsev said that to be in a communicative phase and emit dedicated messages are not the same. For example, humans, although communicating with each other, we are not broadcasting a very high power radio beacon to other stars. Thus we know for a fact that just because an intelligent civilization exists right at this moment (us!) it doesn’t mean that they are trying to communicate with others.
For this reason, he suggested introducing the METI factor (messaging to extraterrestrial intelligence) to the equation. He defined the METI factor as the fraction of communicative civilizations that actually engage in deliberate interstellar transmission.
Criticism
Obviously, many terms in the equation are based on conjecture. Star formation rates are well-known, and the incidence of planets has a sound theoretical and observational basis, but the other terms in the equation become very speculative. The uncertainties revolve around our understanding of the evolution of life, intelligence, and civilization, not physics.
No statistical estimates are possible for some of the parameters, where only one example is known. The net result is that the equation cannot be used to draw firm conclusions (although Drake himself said this; the idea behind the equation was not to calculate the true answer; the idea was show each of the factors that we should be thinking about.)
The Fermi Paradox
A civilization lasting for tens of millions of years could, in principle, be able to spread throughout the galaxy, even at the slow speeds foreseeable with our own current technology. However, no confirmed signs of civilizations or intelligent life elsewhere have been yet found in our Galaxy. Some scientists suggested that we already should have seen evidence of such ET life, yet we haven’t. Thus they say this is a paradox. We analyze this issue here:
SETI – Is the Fermi paradox really a paradox?
See The Drake Equation interactive PBS NOVA
Learning standards
Next Generation Science Standards: Science & Engineering Practices
● Ask questions that arise from careful observation of phenomena, or unexpected results, to clarify and/or seek additional information.
● Ask questions that arise from examining models or a theory, to clarify and/or seek additional information and relationships.
● Ask questions to determine relationships, including quantitative relationships, between independent and dependent variables.
● Evaluate a question to determine if it is testable and relevant.
● Ask and/or evaluate questions that challenge the premise(s) of an argument, the interpretation of a data set, or the suitability of the design
Common Core High School Math Probability and Statistics
Making Inferences and Justifying Conclusions
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Understand and evaluate random processes underlying statistical experiments
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Make inferences and justify conclusions from sample surveys, experiments and observational studies
Conditional Probability and the Rules of Probability
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Understand independence and conditional probability and use them to interpret data
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Use the rules of probability to compute probabilities of compound events in a uniform probability model
Mathematical Practices
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Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
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Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
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Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.
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Model with mathematics.
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Use appropriate tools strategically.
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Attend to precision.
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Look for and make use of structure.
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Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSS.IC.A.1
Understand statistics as a process for making inferences about population parameters based on a random sample from that population.
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSS.IC.A.2
Decide if a specified model is consistent with results from a given data-generating process, e.g., using simulation. For example, a model says a spinning coin falls heads up with probability 0.5. Would a result of 5 tails in a row cause you to question the model?
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSS.CP.A.1
Describe events as subsets of a sample space (the set of outcomes) using characteristics (or categories) of the outcomes, or as unions, intersections, or complements of other events (“or,” “and,” “not”).
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSS.CP.A.2
Understand that two events A and B are independent if the probability of A and B occurring together is the product of their probabilities, and use this characterization to determine if they are independent.
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSS.CP.A.3
Understand the conditional probability of A given B as P(A and B)/P(B), and interpret independence of A and B as saying that the conditional probability of A given B is the same as the probability of A, and the conditional probability of B given A is the same as the probability of B.
Common Core, English Language Arts Standards » Science & Technical Subjects
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RST.9-10.1 – Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of science and technical texts, attending to the precise details of explanations or descriptions.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RST.9-10.2 – Determine the central ideas or conclusions of a text; trace the text’s explanation or depiction of a complex process, phenomenon, or concept; provide an accurate summary of the text.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RST.9-10.4 – Determine the meaning of symbols, key terms, and other domain-specific words and phrases as they are used in a specific scientific or technical context.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RST.9-10.5 – Analyze the structure of the relationships among concepts in a text, including relationships among key terms (e.g., force, friction, reaction force, energy).
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RST.9-10.6 – Analyze the author’s purpose in providing an explanation, describing a procedure, or discussing an experiment in a text, defining the question the author seeks to address.
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