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[Ken Olum <kdo cosmos phy tufts edu>]

Dear TheoryNet participants:

I sat in on Mike Fetsko's classes at Braintree High School, and I'm
going to lecture to his AP class and one of his accelerated classes on
March 3.  It was a good idea to sit on the classes before making any
other plans: it was somewhat of a revelation to me how little can be
done in a 45 minute high school class.

I thought about what I could do as a professional physicist in a high
school classroom and I decided on two ideas.  One is to discuss my own
work, so the students can have some idea what physicists do, and the
other is to give them some insight about how a physicist thinks about
basic topics in physics.  I also wanted to have some connection, if
possible, between what they were learning in class and what I would
discuss.

In the end I decided to do one of each.  In the AP class, where they
will have just discussed capacitors, I will talk about the Casimir
effect.  In the accelerated class, where they will just have talked
about vibrations and waves, I will talk about surface waves on water,
in particular the interesting fact that there is a slowest-moving
water wave, and thus a sufficiently low but nonzero wind velocity
produces no waves.

What are others up to?

                   Ken