What a Weekend!

Thursday:

• Physics club meeting, always fun. Pizza, cookies, and an explosive new demo with liquid nitrogen. Thanks Jenna! (picture soon)
  
  
• QCElite Robotics Open House. More cookies, more fun. In last year's FIRST robotics competition, the robots needed to shoot a small nerf ball through a large vertical hoop. At the open house, the QCElite robot was shooting hoops in the grade school gym at a regular basketball hoop -- and making it! It's amazing what these high school kids can build.
  
  Friday:
  
• First day of ISAAPT physics teachers' meeting, including...
  
• Chance to catch up with grad Brett Dailey, currently in education grad school at WIU -- got to hear about his kids and his plan to teach physics in Peoria. I suppose that means I'll see him at plenty more physics teachers' meetings.
  
  
• The QCElite robotics team had a booth at the meeting to inform high school teachers about this wonderful opportunity for high school students. For a while, Nick was by himself at the booth, showing off the robot and answering questions knowledgeably and with confidence. Makes a mom proud!
  
  
• Lee Carkner presented a talk entitled "'In the End, We Get it All.' Using Martin Scorsese's 'Casino' to Teach Statistical Physics." Fun and interesting. Dr. Carkner and his movie references!
  
  
• Dr. Sean Carroll, Particle Theory Group, Physics Department, California Institute of Technology spoke on Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Awesome talk! Very interesting and informative, and he didn't mince words concerning what we have strong evidence for (e.g. big bang), and what has yet to be testable by experiment or observation (e.g. string theory). There was one little thing I didn't like in his talk. I may rant about that in another post soon -- I've been ranting a lot lately. If I don't, you'll know I've gone back to being mild-mannered college professor.
  
  Saturday:
  
• Day two of ISAAPT physics teachers' meeting, including...
  
• Dean Sieglaff juggling!
  
  
• Dean Sieglaff gave a talk entitled "Using Interactive Physics to Teach Analytical Mechanics." No it wasn't about space elevators nor MathCad! Interesting and informative nevertheless.
  
  
• I gave a talk entitled " The Way to a Student's Brain is through Their Stomach" about demos using food - I made myself hungry, then was too busy to eat lunch.
  
  
• Jenna McAdam, APOP^* coordinator, gave a talk entitled "Inspiring a New Generation to Physics" showing off our physics club outreach, and inspiring other schools to do outreach, too.
  
  
• After the meeting, ran right over to the slough to see the cardboard boat regatta. I must've just missed it - all I saw was a dripping wet boat on the sidewalk and people who wanted to tell me our boat was awesome, just not quite fast enough. At least our paddles held up this year. Apparently we won our first heat handily, but went down in the semifinals. Just wait 'til next year!
  
  
• That evening, participated in a trivia night. Our team of 8, including two Augie faculty (Vogel & Carkner), two Augie students, and relatives, took first place! The easy physics and astronomy questions^** were all multiple choice, but the hard questions about sports and Elvis songs weren't. OK, maybe they wouldn't be easy if you weren't a physics and/or astronomy professor!
  
  Sunday:
  
• Punkin' chuckin' in Alpha, IL. Too bad I didn't know about it until it was on the news that evening. They claimed the pumpkins were flying 3000 ft. It looked awesome! And their cannon said, "We do the Math" on it -- unleash nerd fury!
  

^*Augustana Physics Outreach Program
^**See if you can answer them:
An object's velocity is constant only if ___.
If you are looking at a rainbow, where is the sun?
The longest day of the year is called ___.
When the moon passes between the earth and the sun, blocking the sun's rays from part of teh earth's surface, it is called ___.
Who is credited with discovering the existence of galaxies otside our own? (OK, we were lucky on this last one, because Dr. Carroll had mentioned it in his talk the night before.)