Pat Nelson (he/him)

@patnelsonbc.bsky.social

Math/Science teacher in Fort Nelson,BC.

Public libraries are just amazing! My daughter is doing a D&D campaign as part of the summer reading program and while I am waiting, someone got a document scanned, then an elderly person got help with their fit-bit, a bunch of books were signed out, and it is all just so damn pleasant.

Real life math: I am adding a title to an audio file to make a video for youtube. The video editing software lets me stretch the length of the title clip to double its current length (more or less). The clip is initially 5 seconds long, how many times do I need to do this to make it an hour long?

Watching Wheel of Fortune and people always buy vowels at the first opportunity, but surely that is more likely to help your opponents? I would think you should wait until you think you will be able to solve.

Okay, I think I muddled my way into an awesome sequence of chemistry experiments for science for citizens 11 (a general science course) On Monday we did PhET simulations on building atoms and building molecules then did burning gummy bear as demo.

What major skills do you think should and/or will be dropped from a standard K-12 curriculum in the next 20 years? Equation solving maybe? I can't imagine what it would mean to be good at math without being able to do basic algebra but maybe it is possible. #iTeachMath

Had students implement the compound interest formula in Sheets today and got them to see if the values approached a limit as # of compounding periods increased. Unfortunately ran into some kinda bug after about a billion compounding periods per year. #iteachmath

A Google Sheets graph showing total in a compound interest calculation with the number of compounding periods increasing. The value approaches $93  344.25 as compounding periods increases to 10 million times per year and 100 million times per year but then shoots up a bit more at 1 billion times and at 1x10^21 the value becomes 4000 which was the original principal.

This year in Physics 11 I decided to make the problem sets in-class assignments. The reason was AI, but I like it. Students all get the same challenging questions but with different values and are encouraged to collaborate and use their notes. Lots of great discussions happening.

Coil of magnet wire, with two ends sticking out. One fully sanded, one sanded on only one side. Held up by two paperclips over a plastic cup with a magnet on top. A few batteries to provide electricity to the paper clips. I have made this so many times but each time it is magical. #iteachphysics

MY GO TO REVIEW. Make sheets with topic title on top (5-10 topics), hand out sets in order. Students write all they can about their topic for x min then pass sheets 'til everyone has seen every topic plus a couple extra. All who ended with the same topic go to the same VNPS to condense key points.

The bells at my school have been slowly slowing. So time for a task on linear change right? Rate of change averages out to be .86 sec/day. Then we confidently predicted when they would ring a week later. BUT IT IS A WEEK LATER AND THEY ARE STILL EXACTLY THE SAME AMOUNT OFF! 🤷‍♂️ #iteachmath

Any ideas on a quick, in desk, non dice, activity students could do which when tabulated over the class would create a normal distribution? I normally time students walking across the room but everyone was feeling shy about that today (which is fair enough). #iteachmath