Group Activities
In general, I tried doing group activities when the students could otherwise get away with not thinking about the concepts physically. With light and Doppler shift, especially, I felt that many students would not try to think about what an electro-magnetic wave actually meant, or why wavelength and frequency are related. I also was surprised at how doing group activities sometimes give you, as a teacher, the opportunity to get on your soap box and emphasize the fundamentals of what science is and how it is done. If anyone has any further questions about these projects, I’d be more than happy to talk about them further anytime. I love this stuff and would be interested in how someone else tackles the same ideas and student difficulties.
By Christer Watson (8/99)