“Problem Solving” Honors Class End with a Splash!

This very well may have been my favorite class ever.

We read some physics education journals articles on problem solving: Thanks Wendy Adams and Carl Wieman AJP 83, 459 (2015). Thanks Phillips, et. al. (A Problem-Solving Framework to Assist Students and Teachers in STEM Courses), and others.

We did back of the envelope calculations. How many crabs are there in Long Island Sound?

We measured the speed of light, sound, and hung out with electrons.

We learned MATLAB! We did a Monte-Carlo calculations of mice running through mazes.

We grew bacteria and modeled their growth in MATLAB! https://cosmicpathways.org/growth-workshop/

We even read and discussed the Mueller Report!

And finally they had to pick a problem and solve it. Here are some examples of the problems that they worked on:

Modeling atom-atom interactions toward modeling a solid.
Exploring how an online beauty app does its calculations
What would be involved in creating a sustainable farm on Mars
Using VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) in Excel for color coding financial reports
Depression and anxiety for members and non-members of LGBTQ community
Rudimentary modeling of the game Risk
How does a ski village deal with decreasing snow from global warming?
How To Make A Decision: A Guide for Those Who Are Decisionally Challenged
Modelling the Early Progression of Prion Infection (with three coupled first order differential equations).
How does gruesome scenes in grey’s anatomy correlate to external events
Should I vaccinate or not?

In general I am very proud of the whole class.

Here are some pictures from their talks.