| Topic: |
Science > Physics |
| User: |
"Robert" |
| Date: |
10 Jun 2005 09:28:54 AM |
| Object: |
Teaching physics with the Big Dig |
In a high school physics course I am interested in grabbing my student's
attention by offering examples and problems related to Boston's "Big Dig",
one of the great engineering projects of our century.
Can anyone reccomend any websites or books that would offer examples and/or
lesson plans related to this?
Much thanks,
Robert
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| User: "Uncle Al" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics with the Big Dig |
10 Jun 2005 12:25:27 PM |
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Robert wrote:
In a high school physics course I am interested in grabbing my student's
attention by offering examples and problems related to Boston's "Big Dig",
one of the great engineering projects of our century.
Not "project," "boondoggle." Incredibly over budget, incredibly over
allotted time, and it it leaks. If the kids want to do a pretty, rent
some metal detectors and look for rebar in the so-called reinforced
concrete.
The Loizeaux family (Controlled Demolition) imploding old Las Vegas
hotels was rather put off by discovering that blueprints were not
quite descriptive of the structures. Unlike construction anywhere
else in the US, folks building for the Mob loaded the concrete with
massive rebar reinforcement way above specs (lest they become part of
the next foudndation poured).
Can anyone reccomend any websites or books that would offer examples and/or
lesson plans related to this?
http://www.fuckinggoogleit.com/
--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/qz.pdf
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| User: "Robert" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics with the Big Dig |
12 Jun 2005 09:43:30 AM |
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"Uncle Al" <UncleAl0@hate.spam.net> wrote :
Can anyone reccomend any websites or books that would offer examples
and/or
lesson plans related to this?
http://www.fuckinggoogleit.com/
Is there any reason you responsed to a serious question with such a useless
and offputting answer? You really need to read a book like "How to make
friends and influence people".
I'll have you know that I have done a lot of web searching on this issue.
Unfortunately, I haven't yet found anything useful. There's lots of
articles which mention both "Big Dig" and "physics", but precious few of
which contain any serious discussion of physics. There are a lot of
websites that have detailed physics papers, but way above the heads of
freshman college physics level, or high school physics level.
It just seems shocking to me that after ten years, no one has created a book
or web page using the many physics problems encountered during the Big Dig
to serve as a basis for getting the attention of and education advanced high
school physics students.
Robert
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics with the Big Dig |
13 Jun 2005 03:05:27 AM |
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In article <mSXqe.311601$cg1.191555@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>,
"Robert" <rkscience100@yahoo.com> wrote:
"Uncle Al" <UncleAl0@hate.spam.net> wrote :
Can anyone reccomend any websites or books that would offer examples
and/or
lesson plans related to this?
http://www.fuckinggoogleit.com/
Is there any reason you responsed to a serious question with such a
useless
and offputting answer? You really need to read a book like "How to make
friends and influence people".
I'll have you know that I have done a lot of web searching on this issue.
Unfortunately, I haven't yet found anything useful. There's lots of
articles which mention both "Big Dig" and "physics", but precious few of
which contain any serious discussion of physics. There are a lot of
websites that have detailed physics papers, but way above the heads of
freshman college physics level, or high school physics level.
It just seems shocking to me that after ten years, no one has created a
book
or web page using the many physics problems encountered during the Big Dig
to serve as a basis for getting the attention of and education advanced
high
school physics students.
Sigh! Nothing will be done until all the lawsuits are laid to rest
which may be when pigs fly. For [whatevertheirnameis] to publish
the specs would be legal self-immolation.
Now, MIT sent its engineering students to observe and you may
be able to find some of their reports. However, I suspect that
those reports have been (and I can't think of a word) but
whatever lawyers do to keep the papers from becoming public
until all lawsuits are settled.
Mass. Attorney General is "pursuing" all the crooks who
fed at the $14 billion+ trough; he is also running for
governor next year. Unless, you also with to have
a concurrent lesson on politics, patronage gone completely
insane and corruption, forget about the Big Dig.
/BAH
Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics with the Big Dig |
11 Jun 2005 04:37:38 AM |
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In article <42A9CD07.826276EC@hate.spam.net>,
Uncle Al <UncleAl0@hate.spam.net> wrote:
Robert wrote:
In a high school physics course I am interested in grabbing my student's
attention by offering examples and problems related to Boston's "Big
Dig",
one of the great engineering projects of our century.
Not "project," "boondoggle." Incredibly over budget, incredibly over
allotted time, and it it leaks.
It is a very good study about how patronage can fucks things up.
.. If the kids want to do a pretty, rent
some metal detectors and look for rebar in the so-called reinforced
concrete.
The Loizeaux family (Controlled Demolition) imploding old Las Vegas
hotels was rather put off by discovering that blueprints were not
quite descriptive of the structures. Unlike construction anywhere
else in the US, folks building for the Mob loaded the concrete with
massive rebar reinforcement way above specs (lest they become part of
the next foudndation poured).
Can anyone reccomend any websites or books that would offer examples
and/or
lesson plans related to this?
http://www.fuckinggoogleit.com/
I don't think that will help. Specs would be fodder for the
lawsuit mill.
/BAH
Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics with the Big Dig |
10 Jun 2005 01:26:38 PM |
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Robert wrote:
In a high school physics course I am interested in grabbing my student's
attention by offering examples and problems related to Boston's "Big Dig",
one of the great engineering projects of our century.
Can anyone reccomend any websites or books that would offer examples and/or
lesson plans related to this?
Much thanks,
Robert
Hooo Boy!
Problems: Corruption, Mismanagent.
Fallback position 1 = Stick It to the Taxpayer.
Fallback position 2 = Stick It to the Tollpayers.
400,000 gallon/day leak. Do you know what 400,000 galons
looks like?
Solution: Charge tunnel users an extra $15.00 for the
car wash.
One great feat was to thread a new tunnel between the bottom of
a scyscraper and above the top of a subway station below.
Do it without disruption the operations of either.
A great feat to be sure, but after the cost and lack of benefit,
one has to ask "Why Bother?". "Because We Can" seemed to be a
good enough answer. See Falback Position 1, above.
To model and simulate the Ted Williams Tunnel, I recommend:
Start with a large kitchen strainer
Fill it with packed, shredded $1,000 bills.
Pour in water so that the water saturates the money and
flows through the strainer at a moderate rate.
A perfect high school simulation.
What, you say high schoolers can't afford to shred $1,000 bills?
Like I said, a perfect simulation.
Maybe take a look at Boston.com, an excellent portal site for
the city run in partnershop with The Boston Globe (for news stories).
The cable-stay bridge is actually pretty cool, and at 83 Million,
was real chump change.
Cheers,
Tony.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics with the Big Dig |
11 Jun 2005 04:40:22 AM |
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In article <1118427998.743334.230940@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>,
wrote:
Robert wrote:
In a high school physics course I am interested in grabbing my student's
attention by offering examples and problems related to Boston's "Big
Dig",
one of the great engineering projects of our century.
Can anyone reccomend any websites or books that would offer examples
and/or
lesson plans related to this?
Much thanks,
Robert
Hooo Boy!
Problems: Corruption, Mismanagent.
Fallback position 1 = Stick It to the Taxpayer.
Fallback position 2 = Stick It to the Tollpayers.
400,000 gallon/day leak. Do you know what 400,000 galons
looks like?
Solution: Charge tunnel users an extra $15.00 for the
car wash.
Not in winter. Then the car could be used for the block
in the ice box.
One great feat was to thread a new tunnel between the bottom of
a scyscraper and above the top of a subway station below.
Do it without disruption the operations of either.
A great feat to be sure, but after the cost and lack of benefit,
one has to ask "Why Bother?". "Because We Can" seemed to be a
good enough answer. See Falback Position 1, above.
To model and simulate the Ted Williams Tunnel, I recommend:
Start with a large kitchen strainer
Fill it with packed, shredded $1,000 bills.
Pour in water so that the water saturates the money and
flows through the strainer at a moderate rate.
A perfect high school simulation.
What, you say high schoolers can't afford to shred $1,000 bills?
Like I said, a perfect simulation.
Maybe take a look at Boston.com, an excellent portal site for
the city run in partnershop with The Boston Globe (for news stories).
The cable-stay bridge is actually pretty cool, and at 83 Million,
was real chump change.
That seems to be the only thing that is working according to spec.
I'm waiting for the shoe to drop.
/BAH
Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.
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| User: "Puppet_Sock" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics with the Big Dig |
10 Jun 2005 11:55:50 AM |
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Robert wrote:
In a high school physics course I am interested in grabbing my student's
attention by offering examples and problems related to Boston's "Big Dig",
one of the great engineering projects of our century.
Can anyone reccomend any websites or books that would offer examples and/or
lesson plans related to this?
This is the huge tunnel they are trying to put all the traffic
into, right? Dunno if I'd call it "one of the great engineering
projects of our century." The Chunnel seems like it's pretty far
advanced in comparison, just as an example.
Well, the obvious easy questions can be used to warm them up.
- How much earth has to be moved? How much concrete will be used?
And various other materials used, such as ashphalt, rebar, etc.
- What should the air flow be to keep the air in the tunnel at
an acceptable level for breathing? For running engines?
Where should the vents be? Where should the driving fans be?
Where on the surface should the intake and outlet vents be?
- How should lighting in the tunnel be arranged? Get into the
old inverse square law. Account for not glare blinding drivers.
Account for not having dark spots. Make some effort to have
even lighting down the tunnel.
To get beyond such things you need to get
into something like bridge building, beam loading, etc.
These are all pretty complicated to do for highschool students.
Third year university students have often got deficiencies
in their calculus that make these difficult.
You could have a practical activity involving a model of the
tunnel, and test it to some specified failure mode. Say you
pile bricks on top of the model till it deforms by a specified
amount, or till it fails catastrophically, or some such.
You'd need to be pretty clever about how you applied the
weight so that no possible failure mode could result in anybody
getting hurt. A large pile of bricks tumbling over on one
of your students is unlikely to make you popular. When I was
in highschool, we did bridges. Tested them by suspending bricks
from them, the bricks on a board, the board suspended by ropes
from the bridge, and held only a 1/4 inch above the floor or so.
So, you could have teams dedicated to various parts of the task.
One team to design and build the model. One to design and build
the test rig.
Socks
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| User: "Robert" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics with the Big Dig |
12 Jun 2005 09:43:31 AM |
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"Puppet_Sock" <puppet_sock@hotmail.com> wrote :
Well, the obvious easy questions can be used to warm them up.
- How much earth has to be moved? How much concrete will be used?
And various other materials used, such as ashphalt, rebar, etc.
- What should the air flow be to keep the air in the tunnel at
an acceptable level for breathing? For running engines?...
...[snip]...
Thanks much for your thoughtful ideas. I'll be using them!
Robert
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Teaching physics with the Big Dig |
11 Jun 2005 04:35:11 AM |
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In article <1118422550.797927.292630@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
"Puppet_Sock" <puppet_sock@hotmail.com> wrote:
Robert wrote:
In a high school physics course I am interested in grabbing my student's
attention by offering examples and problems related to Boston's "Big
Dig",
one of the great engineering projects of our century.
Can anyone reccomend any websites or books that would offer examples
and/or
lesson plans related to this?
This is the huge tunnel
Tunnels.
..they are trying to put all the traffic
into, right? Dunno if I'd call it "one of the great engineering
projects of our century."
The "great" measures the number of pockets that have been lined
with gold. And they're not done yet. The lawyers' pockets are
now opening.
..The Chunnel seems like it's pretty far
advanced in comparison, just as an example.
Well, the obvious easy questions can be used to warm them up.
- How much earth has to be moved? How much concrete will be used?
And various other materials used, such as ashphalt, rebar, etc.
- What should the air flow be to keep the air in the tunnel at
an acceptable level for breathing? For running engines?
Where should the vents be? Where should the driving fans be?
Where on the surface should the intake and outlet vents be?
- How should lighting in the tunnel be arranged? Get into the
old inverse square law. Account for not glare blinding drivers.
Account for not having dark spots. Make some effort to have
even lighting down the tunnel.
To get beyond such things you need to get
into something like bridge building, beam loading, etc.
These are all pretty complicated to do for highschool students.
Third year university students have often got deficiencies
in their calculus that make these difficult.
You could have a practical activity involving a model of the
tunnel, and test it to some specified failure mode. Say you
pile bricks on top of the model till it deforms by a specified
amount, or till it fails catastrophically, or some such.
You'd need to be pretty clever about how you applied the
weight so that no possible failure mode could result in anybody
getting hurt. A large pile of bricks tumbling over on one
of your students is unlikely to make you popular. When I was
in highschool, we did bridges. Tested them by suspending bricks
from them, the bricks on a board, the board suspended by ropes
from the bridge, and held only a 1/4 inch above the floor or so.
So, you could have teams dedicated to various parts of the task.
One team to design and build the model. One to design and build
the test rig.
I would suggest studying the building of a qanat. I still haven't
figured out how that works (I need to either build one or maintain
one before I can learn how).
Other projects can be found in _A History of Engineering in
Classical and Medieval Times_, Donald Hill, 1984 (Barnes &
Noble publication, 1997, ISBN 0-7607-0486-6. There's
enough practical application of physics in that book to
keep those kids busy until they retire.
/BAH
Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.
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