Berner, William

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Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Publication
    A Demonstration of the Infrared Activity of Carbon Dioxide
    (2019-01-01) Sieg, Philip; Berner, William; Harnish, Peter; Nelson, Philip C
    Before they can talk meaningfully about anthropogenic climate change, students need to grasp basic principles of natural planetary climates, for example, the key role of trace atmospheric gases in setting surface temperature. We describe a dramatic demonstration that scales well for large audiences and that requires as little as ten classroom minutes to show the crucial difference between room air and carbon dioxide gas. Beyond its significance for public policy, the demonstration can serve as a springboard to motivate discussion of important physics concepts such as rotation and vibration spectra.
  • Publication
    Activities and Classroom Demonstrations in Biological Physics: A resource document
    (2018-07-30) Nelson, Philip C; Berner, William
    We give detailed recipes for a number of classroom demonstrations relevant to biological physics instruction. We developed them mainly for use in 2nd-3rd year undergraduate Physics courses. But you can (and we do) use them for primary school, through high school, up to PhD candidates. You adapt the words for each audience, but a phenomenon is a phenomenon. We also outline a 1-hour introduction to Python for undergraduate scientific computing. Finally we document some outcomes from courses taught at U Pennsylvania using these resources and others cited here. This material was presented at a workshop at the AAPT meeting in July 2018.