Physics on the Road Demos
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The Traveling Physics on the Road has impacted approximately 30,000 K-12 students per year in the last ten years. Our demonstration show lasts up to an hour, and can be tailored to various age groups and to meet school scheduling requirements. The show is always a hit with students of all ages and their teachers as it relates the fun and excitement of science.
The heart of the post-visit instrument lies in the section on Classroom Adaptations of FunFest Demonstrations.
Anyone who is interested in construction or presentation details of the actual demonstrations used in our road show may also view our Handbook.
Physics on the Road Teacher's Guide (cover)
Physics on the Road takes many of the demonstrations used at the annual FunFest to classrooms. Since the fall of 1995, a Physics FunFest Teacher's Guide has been made available to all schools scheduling a Physics on the Road performance.
The result is a collection of pre-visit and post-visit materials which should allow teachers to sustain the impact of an On the Road visit over several weeks or months, depending upon local needs and curricular structure. The pre-visit activities consist of Questions to Ponder, where students are presented with situations related to those they will see in the demonstration show. Each of the activities requires the students to use their imaginations to see if they can come up with plausible methods of how a particular outcome of an experiment could be accomplished, or what outcomes might be possible.
The Physics on the Road Demonstrations cover areas of physics which span an entire year's study, teachers can select from nearly twenty different activities appropriate for nearly any time during the school year, or utilize several of the adaptations to sustain the Physics on the Road impact for months. The adaptations vary in complexity, allowing students of all ages to participate. This section also includes a list of materials and suggested sources for their purchase.
The Physics on the Road demonstrations were developed with large audiences in mind, most of the demonstrations would be quite impractical to attempt to duplicate in the classroom. Because of this, we have developed hands-on, minimum materials, minimum cost adaptations where the students can prove to themselves that the principles of physics apply to situations they can manipulate. For example, the Bed-of-Nails is one of the most popular, and least believed of the demonstrations. By using a 3" square piece of foam insulation and 100 straight pins, students can construct their own "Bed-of-Pins" which will support a water balloon without bursting (usually).
The post-visit materials consist of three sections:
The section on Explanations is indispensable in dealing with questions that arise after the equipment and demonstrator have departed, and you can't remember what was going on because you were too busy with crowd control. Likewise, Real-World Examples can come in handy when having to deal with the universal question of "So why is this important to me?"
