EDSS 541

Reading Reflection #2:  COMPLETE Activities 7.1 and 7.2 from Baldwin & Keating:

7.1  Since we’re limited in the amount of time we have to work with our local districts or our cooperating teachers and students before we start planning our ITU, it seems we have to focus on the standards and the textbooks for our direct ion.  I think it would also be good to find something really relevant to the students’ lives, so they can see how our disciplines affect them and how they could participate in them as adults.

Our team is composed of 2 members; one teaching Physics and one teaching Earth Science, which doesn’t allow for a very broad range of interdisciplinary themes.  We’ve settled on hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, as a theme.  It has plenty of Physics, plenty of earth science, is topical and its relationship to other disciplines is elementary enough that we might be able to design some lessons around history or economics to supplement our science backgrounds.

7.2  Some Essential Questions for our theme:

How is it possible to apply enough force to fracture a rock formation miles underground?  Which speaks to how fracking works and leads into the subjects of hydraulics, i.e. pressure, Pascal’s principal, how Pascal’s principle reflects the definition of work and how hydraulic systems relate to simple machines.

How does the greenhouse effect work?  Which speaks to the ecological implications of finding abundant new sources of cheap fossil fuels and leads into a whole range of Physics, possibly more than we can really cover.  Quantum theory, optics, the nature of light, the Bohr model of the atom are all needed to understand scattering and the greenhouse effect.  Or, we could leave it at “The Greenhouse Effect”.  But I’d rather cover the details.

Where does electricity come from?  Which addresses both ecological and political/economic implications of  fracking by way of the fact that natural gas is the currently preferred fuel fior electrical generating plants.  A complete coverage of the question brings in thermodynamics and E&M as well as nuclear physics and solid state physics, if one goes so far as to cover nuclear and solar energy.