PhatPhysiks.com

We are at the end of another school year, and a year or so into a new administration in Washington.  This is the time when the focus is on what reforms a new year in the Public schools to try to improve learning, graduation rates, and general public perception.
Unfortunately the later is often what is [...]

The New York Times is running a long atictle talking about the Obama educational plan called Race to the Top.    Fox news, and everyone else, is talking about how wonderful charter schools and places like KIPP are. There are no doubt that many of these succesful.  There is also little reason for us to be [...]

The Saturday Wall Street Journal ran an essay on the benifits of more school time, a la Saturday School.  It was written by Chester E. Finn, Jr., the secretary of Education in the Reagan administration and a professor of education.  The article is a good read because it has nearly all the misconceptions typical of [...]

One theory of learning is that we use prior experience and knowledge to model novel experiences and concepts,which are then refined over time. On an abstract level we see this in the atom.  At one time we modeled the atom after plum pudding, then after the solar system.  Over time the atom has far exceeded [...]

I just gave a final exam that none of my students could complete.  It was simply a matter of breaking down the problem into pieces, apply the known rules, and put the peices back together.  I am constantly remided that this is a learned skill, but I can never eundersatnd why it takes it so [...]

On the way to the airport I stopped by the The National Museum of Nuclear Science & History. I would say that compared to the Bradbury Musuem in Los Alamos, it is provides a broader perspective(note the word ‘history’) and does is not nearly as technical. It is definitely built for the school [...]

Most of us know by now that the indigenous children of North America were sent to oppressive schools by the government of the United States.  These schools separated the kids from their families and cultures with the stated and funded purpose of indoctrinating them into the common European derived American culture.  The way to do [...]

The New Mexico Mueum of Art has an exhibition on American Impressionism. There we learn that a major characteristic of impressionism is that is it en plein air, that is painted not in a studio, but in open nature. As such, impressionism focuses on painting the light and air, rather than the details [...]

The O’Keeffe museum in Santa Fe has become one my favorite museum. It is case of I am not the most educated appreciators of art, but I know what I like. And I like the abstractions of hers. The dilation, the deformations, the non representational.
Here are one thing that she says that [...]

Todays activities involved a trip from Santa Fe to Las Vegas. This trip passes through the Santa Fe national Forest, and the Pecos Valley. An hour trip in some ways through a lot of nothing, in most ways a journey out of the Santa Fe Mesa to mountains which are always approaching but [...]