INSPIRE In The Classroom |
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by Bill Pine, Chaffey High School, Ontario, CA Natural radio research has been used as part of the physics
program at Chaffey High School since the 1989-90 school year. Participation
in INSPIRE activities has several benefits for the Chaffey physics program.
When we study waves, electricity, electromagnetic waves, electronics and
states of matter (including plasmas, the fourth state) in the spring, these
topics have a richer meaning for students who have participated in INSPIRE.
Other benefits are less obvious, but equally valuable. The travel time up and
down the mountain to our observation site and the time at the site provide an
excellent opportunity for students to get to know each other better - and
provides the same opportunity for the teacher. Finally, there are lots of
worse places to spend time than a beautiful mountain ridgetop in the evening
or morning! Since the normal physics curriculum is so full (we finish
the book), there is not very much time available during class for extras like
INSPIRE. Most of the INSPIRE activities occur after school or on the weekend.
INSPIRE is a way for students to earn extra credit: extra points are earned
at the rate of one point per hour of participation. With around 900 points
available in the regular program, extra credit cannot provide a large
fraction of the points they earn, but every point helps. I also do not want
extra credit to supplant participation in the regular program, so the number
of points available as extra credit is not large. In preparation for the fall VLF observation schedule, I
demonstrate the receiver and play some sample sounds. During the next week,
there are two opportunities for students to come in after school for a
one-hour orientation session. This presentation consists of a half hour
lecture on electromagnetic waves, the ionosphere, natural radio, the
magnetosphere, radio transmitters and receivers. Since this occurs in the
second week of school, the presentation is very rudimentary and quick. The
second half hour consists of a demonstration of how to set up the receivers
and recorders in the field and a chance for the students to practice setting
up and taking down the equipment. This last part is very valuable in saving
time and preventing errors on field trips. The next stage is scheduling field trips. We usually plan
two or three weekday evening trips, called "sunset runs", followed
by three or four weekend morning trips, called "dawn patrols."
These trips occur during the month of October. The times of the trips are
designed to increase the probability of hearing interesting natural signals.
At sunset it is common to hear sferics and tweeks with the tweeks becoming
more pronounced as the sun sets.
The best time to hear whistlers is the morning, The observation site Chaffey uses is about a half hour away
up in the mountains. The site is on a ridgetop about 40 kilometers east of
Los Angeles, but, since no powerlines run along the road, it is
electromagnetically quiet. That means that the hum of 60 Hz electricity is
only a background noise rather than the predominate signal heard.
In the spring the sequence is repeated. In March an
orientation session is offered for those who did not attend in the fall. In
April a couple of sunset runs are followed by several weekend dawn patrols so
that all of the students get a chance to go. |
