The slap bracelet, an inexpensive child's toy,1 makes it easy to engage students in hands-on exploration of potential energy curves as well as of stable, unstable, and meta-stable states. Rather than just observing the teacher performing a demonstration, the students can manipulate the equipment themselves and make their own observations, which are then pooled to focus a class discussion on potential energy functions and stability.
REFERENCES
1.
Available many places, e.g., Oriental Trading Co. (http://www.orientaltrading.com). They typically cost about $4 per dozen.
2.
This quantity would probably be better described as torque, but at this point in the class we have not yet covered torque. In addition, given the imprecise definition of x, the definition of F is similarly imprecise.
3.
Like the slap bracelet, a common children's party favor. Small ones tend to have a shallow potential well and easily “pop,” while larger ones—available at Educational Innovations (http://www.teachersource.com)—require dropping to kick them out of their meta-stable state.
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© 2005 American Association of Physics Teachers.
2005
American Association of Physics Teachers
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