Group A reflection

Reflection on “Representing energy. II. Energy tracking representations”

One of the joys of teaching at the University of New England (in southern Maine) is its proximity to the ocean.  With the semester over, I’ve had the luxury of reading these I-RISE articles on the beach.  With the sun now setting, I’ve returned home to write up some thoughts.

First, a brief background on my experience with energy.  Throughout my undergraduate and graduate studies I received traditional energy instruction, i.e. NO diagrammatic representations whatsoever!  Upon my hire at UNE, I participated in a two-week workshop on Modeling Instruction, since all physics instructors at my university work in studio classrooms and utilize the Modeling method.  During week 2 of that workshop, I was exposed to energy pies.  This way of diagrammatically representing energy opened my eyes forever.  For three years I’ve been joyfully using pie charts. 

Therefore, I was taken aback when the article “Representing Energy I” suggested that pie charts are nice but really don’t get the job done.  That was yesterday.  Today, after having a good night’s sleep and reading “Representing Energy II,” I feel open to the Energy Theater, Energy Cubes, and a whole host of new possibilities.  I’ve been asking my students to answer the same questions that are posed over and over again in these articles: where is the energy at the beginning, what is the energy doing, and how does the energy change?  This is a slow process and we take our time.  The discussion takes place in words and then the energy pies are drawn as a conclusion.  All seems well.  However, when exam time arrives, students consistently show that they struggle with any situation that has more than three forms of energy present.  Most students can only handle simple conservation of energy calculations.  Anything more abstract vexes them greatly.  So much for bringing in sociopolitical issues or crosscutting multiple sciences!

I see the Energy Theater (ET) as a way to bring the previously only-in-words discussions about identification and tracking to life.  My only foray into embodied representations has been asking groups of students to “act out” position vs. time and velocity vs. time graphs.  This has always been an activity that students favor.  The possibility of doing the same thing with energy is exciting.  However, I am not yet willing to abandon energy pies.

As I was completing the article and considering Energy Tracking Diagrams (ETD) and energy animations, an activity sequence came to mind.  My classroom has four tables that seat six students each.  I can ask each group of six to choreograph an ET for their given example.  Once they have successfully acted out their ET performance, I would have them design and submit a “write-up,” in this case an ETD (like that shown in Figure 4).  Finally, if there is a numerically solvable variable, I would ask students to simplify the ETD to an appropriate series of energy pies that would enable them to solve the problem.  I feel that the great strength of pie charts is in simplifying a situation to only the most relevant parts.

Frankly, I am just as excited about the possibility of using Energy Cubes, which I felt received short thrift in this article.  I see cubes as a means of creating an energy animation.  Given that at least one student in any group has an iPhone (which I know is true since I ask them to utilize these for video analysis), cubes offer a perfect opportunity for “stop animation” movies.  Using the cubes, they can track energy transforms and transfers on their whiteboard playing field, taking a snapshot of each change.  They can then send 5-10 images to their email, download and enter into Powerpoint (each table has two iMacs), and make a slideshow flipbook.  This eliminates the need for programming skills and puts the students back in control.  I’m wondering if the Energy Project team has seen this approach/activity in the past.

Posted by Brad (for some reason, I do not see my name posted with this entry on google groups)