Balloons and Physics

Finally I put a new post on my physics blog. I am happy with the progress of my 5 Anggerik students and am confident they will improve. Today's extra class was fairly well attended- 43/60 despite today being a holiday for the school and best of all we had great fun while learning!

Picture shows Sabrinah and Rinnisha with a balloon. Sabrinah whispers something from her section and Rinnisha's eyes gleam and she smiles sweetly when she hears the whisper ever so clearly.

Every where I look, I see happy faces smiling and yet they are learning Physics. I have asked students to do this activity countless time. I love watching the surprise and the joy in their faces. That is what I called Hearts on Learning! This teaching strategy I used often is called Hands-On, Heads-On and Hearts-On Learning. The learning begins by mastering a pyschomotor skill - Hands-On, explaining it cognitively ( Heads-On) and experiencing the joy of learning and a boost in confidence and meaningful applicable learning ( Hearts-On Learning)

The Physics behind that? The carbon dioxide in the balloon blown using our lungs is more dense and makes the balloon acts as a convex lens. The convex lens will focus Sabrinah's soft whisper and amplify it since Rinnisha's ears are placed near the focal point. This experiment illustrate the refraction of sound waves.

What do you think will happen if the balloon is filled with helium gas?

All over in the APD room, the girls conduct the experiment. Every 2 girls share one balloon and take turns to speak and to hear so that they can experience the effect of the baloon focussing the sound personally.

Occasionally some balloons burst and pop loudly and we shriek. This activity is also an example of a pair-shared teaching strategy

Today we conducted many experiments. We started with the diffraction grating and then Young's double slits. We also did the polaroid experiments. The students had a chance to enjoy my powerful green laser. To understand what I am talking about, please read my earlier posts on diffraction gratings last year.

I had to rush off to the Education department but Dorethea, Michelle and Norashikin continued the lesson and taught Parabola to the students using the Student Peer Teaching Strategy. I am quite sure the whole class had fun learning from them as student peer teachers although I wasn't there