13 Sep 2006
I conducted the 1st lesson on "General Wave Properties" with kind assistance from Elsie (ETD), Wan Eng and Peici in facilitating the students' activities. Some learning points:
1. Activity A1: group use of slinky to visualise transverse waves
- need close teacher supervision and facilitation
- some students prefer to have "fun" rather than focus on task given
- students are not used to describing observations of physical phenomena - in terms of language and vocabulary use
2. Activity A2: pair work on PC using applet via internet to investigate graphical representation for transverse waves
- close teacher supervision also required
- internet access may be slow on some PCs
- students have difficulty with concept of displacement (although concept was taught under "Kinematics") - prior discussion would be helpful.
- plotting a displacement-time graph also poses some difficulty - a guided approach to use numerical values to plot such a graph may be useful
- comparing the differences between displacement-time and displacement-position graphs may need more guided questions to bring out relevant features
- more capable students prefer individual PC work - they are more independent.