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Physics and the Arts
When I was in college, I found physics to be unexpectedly easy. Although I was a chemistry major and biology minor, neither chemistry nor biology seemed to make as much sense to me. Since most of my friends found physics to be abstract and difficult, they naturally thought I was just plain weird.
I finally found out what made me weird when I was certified to teach high school several years ago. I learned of Howard Gardner and his theory of Multiple Intelligences, and suddenly everything clicked. Throughout my childhood, my avocations (drawing and painting, playing the clarinet, and baton twirling) were developing my spatial, musical, and bodily-kinesthetic intelligences, and these intelligences come in very handy in learning and understanding various concepts of physics at a gut level. Success in most other subjects relies heavily upon the linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences (these most certainly come in handy in physics as well), but strong spatial and bodily-kinesthetic reasoning in particular are extremely important in physics. A fair number of my AP Physics students report to me, with some surprise, that physics seems easier and more interesting to them than chemistry or biology. These students seem almost uniformly to have strong artistic, musical, or athletic proclivities.
Multiple Intelligence Theory
In 1993, Howard Gardner published a seminal work that was to revolutionize and expand upon the understanding of human intelligence. Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligences originally identified seven different types of intelligence, including:
Verbal-Linguistic Intelligence
Logical-Mathematical Intelligence
Spatial Intelligence
Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence
Musical Intelligence
Interpersonal Intelligence
Intrapersonal Intelligence
Gardner has recently expanded his list to include naturalist and existential intelligences.
Most traditional student instruction has focused upon the first two of these intelligences; however, educators using MI (Multiple Intelligence) theory have since designed successful curricula that make use of all seven intelligences. Teachers who understand and use MI theory in their classrooms often report greater success with and intellectual engagement by those students who are not necessarily verbal-linguistic or logical-mathematical learners.
I have personally found MI theory to be the single most valuable concept I learned when I became certified to teach high school. I consciously design lessons with MI theory in mind. A few ideas I've found successful in my AP Physics B and C classes are described below. These lessons are intended to both use and develop intelligences other than verbal-linguistic and mathematical-logical.
Spatial Intelligence
Physics is beyond question the most spatial of the basic sciences. A student with a less-developed spatial sense can find certain concepts, such as those embodied in the kinematic graphs, to be highly confusing. Most prior exposure to two-dimensional graphs comes in math class, where x and y generally represent positions in space, with x occupying the horizontal axis and y the vertical. It is not surprising that many students enter physics class with an unshakable and deep-seated belief that a two-dimensional graph must represent two spatial dimensions. The time-domain graph of one-dimensional kinematics presents great initial difficulty for these students.
I challenge my students' graphical knowledge during the first week of school in the fall. Before school begins, I prepare my room by taping an x - y coordinate system on the floor with brightly colored adhesive tape. (The custodians at my school indulge me by kindly scraping the grimy remains of this coordinate system off the floor at the end of every school year.) My classroom coordinate system is marked in meters, and all four of its Cartesian quadrants are accessible to the students. (An added benefit is that this coordinate system provides a creative way to let students know their seat assignments on the first day of school.)
I introduce the kinematic graphs before the associated equations by magically turning my students, one by one, into "particles" and instructing them to follow the "instructions" that appear on the board in the form of graphs. Below is a simple example. If this is the first exercise of this kind that we've attempted that year, the student particle will generally proceed to the position (0, 2) on the floor graph and walk straight across the floor parallel to the x-axis, in effect tracing the graph on the floor. I have found that after I draw attention to the axis labels and we talk about what the labels mean, some student will generally, with some hesitation, volunteer to be a particle and stand perfectly still at x = 2 while a classmate times him or her with a stopwatch. Not only does this amuse the class greatly, it also effectively underscores that this is a graph of a stationary particle located at the position x = 2. In the process, we have exposed a common misconception regarding time-domain graphs that will hamper student understanding if not appropriately handled.
As my student particles get more experience, more complicated sets of instructions follow, such as:
Eventually, my students begin to draw a connection between observed motion and the associated time-domain graph. They also derive the kinematic equations from the graphs using concepts (such as slope and intercept) they've studied in math class. Furthermore, they seem really to enjoy being particles!
Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence
Athletes, dancers, and others with high bodily-kinesthetic intelligence are particularly adept at learning through physical movement and hands-on activity. These are the students that love lab! However, physics provides a myriad of other ways to engage kinesthetic learners.
As a rule, I try to get my students out of their seats as much as possible. We throw balls (soft ones!) to each other when we talk about projectile motion. The student-as-particle exercise described in the previous section uses (and develops) spatial skills, but it also engages the kinesthetic learner. Other activities I have found that exploit kinesthetic intelligence involve simulation of real-world experiences by the student within the confines of the physics lab.
An example is a virtual elevator ride. I play "elevator music" while I describe where we are in the ride and encourage the students to let their bodies do what they would ordinarily do during the ride. We start off on the ground floor of the Sears tower. The students step into the elevator, feeling perfectly normal. The elevator begins its ascent, and the students mimic the heavy, knee-buckling feeling as the upward acceleration occurs. Between floors, where constant velocity is obtained, they feel pretty normal and resume the same stance they had on the ground floor in the stationary elevator. At the top floor, the elevator decelerates, and the students rise up out of their shoes to mimic the lighter-than-normal feeling they have as the elevator slows to a stop. We repeat the exercise as we descend from the top of the Sears Tower to the ground floor. And of course, we assume our "elevator gaze" whenever we're riding and assiduously avoid actually looking at our fellow passengers.
After we've taken a couple of elevator rides to the top floor of the Sears Tower and back down to the streets of Chicago accompanied by the corniest elevator music I can find, we analyze the forces at play on our bodies during the ride. During the upward acceleration, the normal force exceeds weight, and the body feels heavy because the floor of the elevator is pushing us up harder than usual. During constant velocity between floors, there is no net force on our bodies and the riders feel relatively normal. During downward acceleration, the normal force is less than our weight, and the body feels light because the floor is not pushing us up as hard as it ordinarily does and there is less force on the soles of our feet. We draw the conclusion that when the body feels as if it is pushed or pulled downward, acceleration is in fact up, and when the body feels pushed or pulled upward, acceleration is in fact down. The general rule, that acceleration is always in the opposite direction of the way the body feels pushed or pulled, is a natural way kinesthetic learners can use to identify the direction of net force. We can use our logical-mathematical intelligence to relate these feeling to Newton's First and Second Laws, but the kinesthetic learner finds it more natural to think in terms of the way acceleration feels to her body.
Later, when we study centripetal force, we simulate virtual roller coaster and racecar rides to identify the direction of the net force and acceleration in circular motion. (When the body feels flung outward, the net force is actually in; hence, net force in circular motion is directed in toward the center of the circle.) Music played during the simulations enhances the experience and hopefully embeds it in the memory.
Musical Intelligence
In addition to using music to accompany the virtual elevator and roller coaster rides described above, I use music in my classroom in a variety of ways. My very favorite unit is waves and sound, where we use the words pitch and note interchangeably with frequency. In one lab during this unit, the goal of the entire class is to build an organ that can play a C-major chord using only tuning forks, graduated cylinders, and water. The musicians in the class take the lead in determining which forks to use to create the desired chord, and all students work hard to get the loudest sounds out of their respective graduated cylinder "organ pipes." At the end of the lab period, we sound our pipes together to produce an awesome sound!
Music is also a good way to help students learn to pace themselves on multiple-choice examinations. My classes love to play Jeopardy (described in the next section), and I use the Jeopardy "Think Theme" song as a timing device. As it turns out, the theme song takes exactly 30 seconds to play. When students are reviewing test-taking strategies prior to the AP Exam, playing the Jeopardy theme through twice for each sample question is a good way to help them practice appropriate pacing for the multiple-choice section, since averaging less than a minute-and-a-half per exam question is a necessity.
Interpersonal Intelligence
Cooperative learning (CL) activities both use and help develop interpersonal intelligence. The key to successful cooperative learning is to structure CL activities so that engagement is mandatory for all students, and clear communication between students is an integral part of the activity.
A rousing game of Jeopardy is a favorite activity among my students. Jeopardy teams, consisting of a maximum of four students, are each outfitted with a small whiteboard, a dry-erase marker, and a clean sock. The Jeopardy game board, made from a sheet of poster board bearing a 5 x 5 array of pockets containing questions, is placed near the front of the room. Teams take turns selecting questions, and every team plays every round. While the Jeopardy Think Theme plays happily in the background, the teams formulate their answer to a question, and the scribe for each team records the answer on the whiteboard. When the song ends, the boards must be held in the air for my review. All teams that answer the question correctly receive the points for the question. Engagement is ensured by requiring that the roll of scribe rotate through each of the members of the team. Only the scribe can write the answer on the whiteboard; other team members may help by collaborating with the scribe on what to write.
Labs are also a great way to develop interpersonal skill in students. My labs are nearly all inquiry-based, which means I give a clear objective and minimal accompanying instructions and guidelines. This encourages creativity and teamwork in problem solving. Occasionally, I tell the class if one group solves a particular problem, all groups will receive an A. The result is inter-group cooperation in which the lab groups collaborate to try different approaches to ensure class success.
Intrapersonal Intelligence
All students need time to reflect and study independently, not only in physics but in other subjects as well. Even though many of the activities in my classroom are cooperative in nature, all students are responsible for keeping an independent class notebook as well as a lab notebook in which they record observations and data. Even though labs are all cooperative, lab reports are independently written.
One metacognitive strategy I have found to be highly successful is to allow each student who did not receive a score of an A- or higher on an examination to correct the exam and thereby receive as much as half of the missed credit back. Exam corrections are done on a student's own time (in the morning or at lunch) and require that the student explain the correct answer, not just select it. Exam corrections are popular among my students because they allow them to repair a poor grade. I like them for a different reason. They provide students with an opportunity to confront persistent misconceptions in a nonthreatening way, and hopefully, to re-learn the material that was not successfully learned the first time. In order to qualify for test-correction privileges, students must receive at least a C on the homework for the unit, which means that the student is encouraged to develop a steady and disciplined approach to learning and practicing the subject.
Near the end of the academic year, when my students are preparing for the AP Examination, I encourage them to think about their personal strengths and weaknesses. I work with each student to devise a personal strategy for exam preparation. Some students will choose to focus their studying on a portion of the material based on their interests, or their strengths, or perhaps their weaknesses. Other students will elect to review the entire body of material for a more comprehensive treatment. Each student's study strategy is based upon a variety of personal factors, such as how many different AP Examinations he or she is preparing for and what the desired outcome is.
In Conclusion
Physics, by its very nature, goes well beyond the verbal-linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences. Therefore, we physics teachers have a golden opportunity to engage our students' other intelligences in a variety of exciting ways that fit very naturally within the framework of our curriculum. We are uniquely positioned to help students develop their intelligences beyond the purely verbal and purely mathematical. I have personally found that teaching to multiple intelligences has been incredibly fun in addition to being profoundly rewarding.
Bibliography
Armstrong, Thomas. Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1994.
Campbell, Linda and Bruce Campbell. Multiple Intelligences and Student Achievement: Success Stories from Six Schools. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1999.
Gardner, Howard. Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic Books, 1993.
Peggy Bertrand holds B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in chemistry from Southeastern Louisiana University and Florida State University, respectively. She had careers as a research chemist and a software entrepreneur prior to becoming certified to teach by the University of Tennessee. Dr. Bertrand currently teaches AP Physics at Oak Ridge High School in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. She serves as an AP Exam Reader and Table Leader and has recently been certified as an AP Physics consultant by the College Board. She has strong interests in multiple intelligences, educational equity, cross-curricular and service learning, and scientific ethics. In her spare time, she enjoys being outdoors with her family, singing, and playing the clarinet (although not necessarily all at the same time).
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