Last fall, students nominated Physics Professor Ed Kinney for an ASSETT Award of Excellence for Outstanding聽Teacher for Technology in Teaching in Physics 1240 Sound and Music.聽 Students wrote that the PhET simulations and YouTube videos that Kinney showed in class supported their learning of complex Physics concepts.聽 In their nominations for Kinney to receive the award, students wrote that:
[Kinney's] use of online simulations like PhET to encourage understanding or to solidify complex concepts like wave movements of strings with or without fixed ends.聽 Also interesting YouTube videos to clarify how things work such as the inner machiantions of the ear.
Kinney stresses that the real credit should go to the creators of simulations, a University of Colorado Boulder office that has created and shared hundreds of free聽science and mathematics simulations for K-12 and higher education learners.聽 "The聽PhET simulations are the backbone of what I use," says Kinney.
What is Physics and Music?聽 Kinney says, "This is an elective class to teach the physics of sound and how that is coordinated with what happens when you make music." 聽In Physics and Music, students learn about sound and sound waves.聽 They learn what happens to the waves as they move through the air from a speaker or musical instrument into your ear and vibrate the parts of the inner ear.聽聽Kinney sometimes聽brings musical instruments to class to show the students the Physics involved in how聽the instruments聽make聽different sounds.
Most of all, Kinney says that simulations are vital to demonstrating these concepts.聽 Kinney says:
If you don鈥檛 have some means of visualizing this thing that is happening in space and time all at once.聽 So the simulations are enormously helpful. ...聽 A lot of the resources I use have to do with getting a good understanding of what waves are like and how they work. 聽It鈥檚 quite an advanced topic.聽 Even Physics majors don鈥檛 get waves until a ways into their education.聽 The mathematics of waves is more advanced.
For example, Kinney asks students to use聽this to learn about waves.
Kinney says, "I can鈥檛 imagine teaching this course without these materials."聽 He says that the simulations show changes and movement of sound through time better than a still image: "There鈥檚 not a still picture in a book that you can get across what is happening in real time when sound waves come into your ear.聽 Still pictures don鈥檛 convey the understanding," says Kinney.
Additionally, Kinney's students use sound recording software like Audacity so that they can see the changes in frequencies as they make different sounds.聽 Kinney says, "The other thing we used was audio software.聽 It鈥檚 free and high quality, which allows students to record sounds and listen to it on their laptops."
Kinney says, "I see teaching as a very much mutual interaction."
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