Highschool Physics

From : International Conference on Islamic Education, KL

2010-02-14T21:12:00.001+07:00

THE DILEMMA OF NATIONAL SCHOOLS WITH INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMS
Zulfan Haidar Zamzuri Umar
Counselor
Head of Department Guidance and Counseling
International Islamic School IIUM
Cambridge International Exam Center MY102.
Contents:
Introduction: where it all begins
Current Statistic: The blooming schools
Current Problems: Hidden facts-Current dreams
The Identity Crisis: National or International
The Dilemma: Either / or
The Bombshell: Where to go from here
Workable Solutions for future Indonesia:

Introduction:
Where it all begins: UU No. 20, year 2003: Sisdiknas verse 50, article 3: the government intend to develop national schools with an international standard.
The Vision: to produce intelligent students who possess a firm belief in God, good attitude and mannerism, national identity to compete in both national and international arena.

The Mission: to upgrade the national educational services and graduates to an international standard.
The development: this open invitation from the central government has sparked excitement to businessmen and mixed responses to educators and teachers alike.
The fact: no clear guidance and supervision from the government are immediately available leading some schools that embrace the programs to freely interpret the invitation without solid future program for the international graduates.
Current Development and Statistics
Following a national invitation from the government, hundreds of schools start adopting the international curriculums and bringing in foreign teachers and principals.
In 2004 in Jakarta: SMAN 70 and Labschool adopted Cambridge Advance Level, this was followed by SMAN 8, SMAN 21, SMAN 68. Surprisingly, the invitation is not well welcome in Jogjakarta and Bandung---two cities famously known as the “city of learning”.
At the end of 2009: 260 schools have been registered as the having the prestigious status, Sekolah Bertaraf International–100 SMAs, 100 SMPs, and 60 SMKs.
Most popular choices of foreign curriculums: Cambridge International Examination (CIE) and International Baccalaureate (IB). CIE certificate can lead its holders to the world Ivy Leagues of world best universities: Cambridge, Oxford, London in Europe and Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Smithsonian, Yale, Temple and Princeton in USA.
Schools with such curriculums are then asking for tuitions fees equivalent to tuition fees of either masters or doctoral studies or in some extreme cases, masters and doctoral fees combined.

Current problems: Clear and Present Danger
Teachers’ competency: according to a survey it will take 3-7 years of training for teachers to master and deliver the subjects well with proper English skills and competency.
Students’ language proficiency: if it takes 3-7 years for a teachers to master both subject and language, how long it takes for the whole school to absorb and understand the teaching and learning processes.
Fantastic annual tuition fees: Kindergarten USD1200-3000, Primary USD 3800-4100, Secondary USD 4800-5600, excluding development fees, extracurricular and other activities. Sinarmas World Academy asking for this: G1-4 Rp80 millions, G5-6 Rp82 millions, and G7-10 Rp89 millions.
School’s status: these international schools with fantastic tuition fees and school facilities, soon become the “elite few” and are affordable only by “super rich parents.”

The Identity Crisis
Indonesia has make it mandatory for each and every citizen, a national examination in all school level.
This has created a national identity crisis among students who have the intentions to further their studies abroad and holders of either Cambridge O or A level certificates.
Why should international schools make it mandatory for every student to sit for the national examination?
Confusing Dualisms: To be national certificate holders or international holders or both?
The lack of clear briefing from the school authority for both parents and students on this issue will intensify the crisis.
On top of this problem, all national universities only accept students with national examination certificates.
Therefore all Indonesian students who studied abroad and intend to take their degrees in national universities should sit for exam on their own by taking the infamous C package.

The Dilemma: Either / or
Having the freedom to implement the both national and international curriculum and learning from other international schools in the Asean countries leads to the notion of this:
national exam and certificate for students who want to further their studies in national universities;
International exam and certificates for graduates who intend to go to Europe or North America, two popular choices beside Australia and Japan.
The Bombshell: Where to go
It is seems easier to establish National school with international curriculum than to provide its graduates with financial assistant and links to universities / colleges to further their studies.
It will be national waste of time and money if these international graduates are unable to be admitted in prestigious international universities.
Surprisingly, only few elite International Schools in Jakarta have access to direct admission to prestigious universities in Europe and North America and Canada.
Workable Solution for the Future
Since establishing an entirely International Program for the whole school requires tremendous efforts in both teachers and learners it is logical to suggest the followings:
1). Establishing international classes with solid program and creative adaptation of both national and international curriculums.
2). Providing graduates with direct links to international higher institutions (universities/colleges)
3). Providing students a freedom of choice to take either international exam (for international admission) or national exam (national admission)

Concluding Remarks:
Indonesia is making a dangerous move by allowing international curriculum to be freely adapted in the national schools back up by national policy.
Soon or later SBI-National schools with International program will intensify the already widening gap between the elite few and the commoners.
Brilliant graduates of international schools who failed to be admitted in international universities/colleges will become “smart garbage” who will eventually back fire their alma-mater—and the nation as a whole.

CAR,it easy..

2010-01-31T17:09:00.006+07:00

What is Action Research?

Action Research is a process in which participants examine their own educational practice systematically and carefully using the techniques of research. It is based on the following assumptions:

*teachers and principals work best on problems they have identified for themselves;
*teachers and principals become more effective when encouraged to examine and assess their own work and then consider ways of working differently;
*teachers and principals help each other by working collaboratively;
*working with colleagues helps teachers and principals in their professional development.
Heidi Watts, Antioch Graduate School

What Action Research Is Not
1.It is not the usual things teachers do when they think about their teaching. Action Research is systematic and involves collecting evidence on which to base rigorous reflection.
2.It is not just problem-solving. Action Research involves problem-posing, not just problem-solving. It does not start from a view of problems as pathologies. It is motivated by a quest to improve and understand the world by changing it and learning how to improve it from the effects of the changes made.
3.It is not research on other people. Action Research is research by particular people on their own work to help them improve what they do, including how they work with and for others. Action Research does not treat people as objects. It treats people as autonomous, responsible agents who participate actively in making their own histories by knowing what they are doing.
4.It is not the scientific method applied to teaching. Action Research is not just about hypothesis-testing or about using data to come to conclusions. It is concerned with changing situations, not just interpreting them. It takes the researcher into view. Action Research is a systematically-evolving process of changing both the researcher and the situations in which he or she works. The natural and historical sciences do not have this aim.
Henry and Kemmis

Techniques for Gathering Data
1.Interviews with students, parents, teachers
2.Checklists of skills, behaviors, abilities, movement, procedures, interactions, resources
3.Portfolios of a range of work from students of different abilities around a particular topic; a representation of a total experience; a collection of documents for analysis
4.Individual files of students' work (e.g., tapes, samples of work, art work, memos, photos of models/projects, reports), of students' opinions; of student attitudes, of students' experiences
5.Diaries/journals written by teachers, students, parents, class groups, teachers
6.Field notes/observation records - informal notes written by a teacher
7.Logs of meetings, lessons, excursions, school expectations, material used
8.Student-teacher discussion/interaction - records of comments and thoughts generated by students
9.Questionnaires of attitudes, opinions, preferences, information
10.Audiotapes of meetings, discussions in class or about data gathered, games, group work, interviews, whole class groups, monologues, readings, lectures, demonstrations
11.Videotapes of classrooms, lessons, groups, demonstrations, a day in a school, lunch times
12.Still photography of groups working, classrooms, faces, particular students over time, at fixed intervals in a lesson
13.Time-on-task analysis of students, teachers; over a lesson, a day, a week
14.Case study - a comprehensive picture/study of a student or a group of students

A Process for Analyzing Your Data

In using qualitative research, you will be collecting and analyzing at the same time. These processes inform each other. Be open to new ways of thinking as you learn more from your data.
1. Go through everything you have collected. Make notes as you go.
2. Look for themes, patterns, big ideas. Key words and phrases can trigger themes. Determine these themes by your scan of the data, not on your preconceived ideas of what you think the categories are.
3. Narrow the themes down to something manageable. (3-5 of your most compelling and interesting)
4. Go back through all of your data and code or label information according to the themes in order to organize your ideas. Some ideas may fit into more than one theme. Create sub-groups under each theme.
5. Write continuously. Jot down what you are seeing, what questions are emerging, and what you are learning. Keep notes on those new ideas which are unanticipated. These may be findings or surprises which you had not planned.
6. Review your information after it is coded/labeled to see if there is

*a frequency of certain items and/or
*powerful, interesting, unusual comments or behaviors which are of particular interest to you. This may be an incident which gives you a new insight, and it may be one of the most important to hold on to.
7. Identify the main points which appear most frequently and are the most powerful. It will be hard to let go of some of your information, but it is important to sift through it.
8. Write up your major points. You can write them up by
* theme,
* chronologically, or
* the different modes you used for collecting information.

9.Draw the information together to include some of the evidence which supports each of your themes. The reader should be able to draw conclusions based on the evidence you have presented.

Balancing Moments

2009-11-19T18:49:00.000+07:00

Examples of Stability of Objects and Oscillations.

Can you balance two forks on a toothpick that is resting on the rim of a cup ?
It seems impossible but with some care and patience, this balancing trick can be done. In fact, it is so stable,you can displace it gently and it will even oscillate!

(percobaan ini sudah dilakukan oleh KIR FISIKA , dan hanya membutuhkan waktu beberapa menit, silahkan Anda coba, Anda akan menjadi pesulap dadakan...)

Archimedes Law

2009-11-11T21:10:00.005+07:00

You remember Archimedes. He was a Greek mathematician, famous for all kinds of things, but among the most oft-repeated tales is how he came to the aid of his friend, Hiero, king of the Greek city of Syracuse. Hiero suspected that a goldsmith charged with making him a royal crown -- one assumes he needed a spare -- had kept some of the gold provided for himself, and mixed in silver to ensure the weight of the final crown matched that of the original lump of gold provided. He didn't want to melt the crown down to discover the truth, but the thought just nagged at him, and he asked Archimedes to help. Inspiration hit one day as Archimedes lowered himself into one of the public baths in the city and noticed displaced water flowing over the sides of the tub. Legend has it that he was so excited with his insight, he leapt out of the tub and ran (naked?) through the streets of Syracuse yelling, "Eureka! Eureka!" ("I found it! I found it!")

A theoretical insight must be backed up by experiment, so Archimedes took a lump of gold and of silver, each weighing the same as the king's crown, although the lump of silver was much larger because silver is lighter than gold. He put each lump in a vessel filled to the rim with water, and noted that the larger amount of silver caused more water to overflow than the lump of gold, because there was more material, even though both weighed the same. He concluded that a solid material will push away an amount of water equal to its own bulkiness (volume). So if the king's crown were indeed made of pure gold, it would have to displace the same amount of water as the lump of pure gold that weighed the same. Unfortunately for the dishonest goldsmith, the crown made more water overflow than the pure lump of gold, proving that the goldsmith had added silver to the crown to make it bulkier. The goldsmith's fate was probably not a happy one.

This property is known as buoyancy: an object will float if its buoyancy is greater than its weight, and will sink if its weight is greater than its buoyancy. It must be said that the shape and position of a given object plays a vital role here: a concrete canoe placed on end in water will sink because the weight of the concrete is greater than that of the displaced water. But in its normal position, the weight of the canoe depends on its total volume, and this includes all the air inside it. So the average weight is less than that of the water displaced, and the canoe floats. It's weird, but true, like many counter-intuitive concepts in physics. And let's face it -- it's also pretty cool. (According to Wikipedia, the competition rules allow teams to insert concrete-covered, non-structural foam pieces in their canoes so that the canoes float after being submerged. Hmmm. Seems like a bit of cheat to me.)

Concrete in some form or another dates back to 5600 BC Serbia (Bora! would be so proud), evidenced by the discovery of remnants of a hut with a floor made of red lime, sand and gravel. In China, the pyramids of Shaanxi (thousands of years old) contain a mixture of lime and volcanic ash or clay, and the Assyrians and Babylonians also used clay as cement in their concrete. Builders in the Roman Empire preferred concrete made from quicklime, pozzolanic ash, and an aggregate mad from pumice (similar to modern Portland cement concrete). They also figured out that adding horse hair made concrete less likely to shrink, while adding blood -- you heard me: blood -- made the concrete more frost-resistant. The Egyptians liked to different and opted for lime and gypsum cement -- although in all seriousness, the variations probably had as much to do with available materials in the different regions as anything else.

2009-10-30T18:00:00.003+07:00

DC Electric Power

The electric power in watts associated with a complete electric circuit or a circuit component represents the rate at which energy is converted from the electrical energy of the moving charges to some other form, e.g., heat, mechanical energy, or energy stored in electric fields or magnetic fields. For a resistor in a D C Circuit the power is given by the product of applied voltage and the electric current:

P = VI

Power = Voltage x Current

Natural hill in action

2009-10-22T17:13:00.005+07:00

Quake Wiped Out Entire Villages

2009-10-09T21:30:00.004+07:00

As rescue workers searched for survivors in the wreckage of a four-story school Thursday, Mira Utami's mother clawed away, too - looking for the shoes missing from her daughter's body.

Mira was taking a high school English final when the quake hit, flattening the school in seconds and killing her a week before her 16th birthday.

"We had planned to celebrate ... but she's gone," said her mother, Malina, weeping amid the wreckage where the barefoot body was found.

John Holmes, the U.N.'s humanitarian chief, set the death toll at 1,100, and the number was expected to grow. Government figures put the number of dead at 777, with at least 440 people seriously injured.

Wednesday's 7.6-magnitude earthquake started at sea and quickly rippled through Sumatra, the westernmost island in the Indonesian archipelago.

An eerie quiet settled over Padang late Thursday as workers called off search efforts for the night.

"More than 50 percent of the buildings are collapsed," Padang resident Joseph Tanto told..
Thousands are thought trapped under shattered buildings in the city of 900,000, raising fears of a significantly higher death toll when the debris is cleared.

"Let's not underestimate. Let's be prepared for the worst," President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said in the capital, Jakarta, before flying to Padang, a coastal city and West Sumatra province's capital.

At least four Indonesian villages were obliterated by earthquake-triggered landslides that buried as many as 644 people including a wedding party under mountains of mud and debris, officials said Saturday.

The full extent of Wednesday's 7.6-magnitude earthquake was becoming apparent three days later as aid workers and government officials reached remote villages in the hills along Sumatra island's western coast.

If all 644 are confirmed dead - as is likely - the death toll in the disaster would jump to more than 1,300. The government's death toll currently is 715, with most casualties reported from the region's biggest city, Padang, where aid efforts are currently focused.

Charge and Charge Interactions

2009-07-08T20:19:00.006+07:00

The Structure of Matter

Perasaan tadi ada listrik elektrostatik dech....

There is a large overlap of the world of static electricity and the everyday world which you experience. Clothes tumble in the dryer and cling together. You walk across the carpeting to exit a room and receive a door knob shock. You pull a wool sweater off at the end of the day and see sparks of electricity. During the dryness of winter, you step out of your car and receive a car door shock as you try to close the door. Sparks of electricity are seen as you pull a wool blanket off the sheets of your bed. You stroke your cat's fur and observe the fur standing up on its end. Bolts of lightning dash across the evening sky during a spring thunderstorm. And most tragic of all, you have a bad hair day. These are all static electricity events - events that can only be explained by an understanding of the physics of electrostatics.

Not only do electrostatic occurrences permeate the events of everyday life, without the forces associated with static electricity, life as we know it would be impossible. Electrostatic forces - both attractive and repulsive in nature - hold the world of atoms and molecules together in perfect balance. Without this electric force, material things would not exist. Atoms as the building blocks of matter depend upon these forces. And material objects, including us Earthlings, are made of atoms and the acts of standing and walking, touching and feeling, smelling and tasting, and even thinking is the result of electrical phenomenon. Electrostatic forces are foundational to our existence.

One of the primary questions to be asked in this unit of The Physics Classroom is: How can an object be charged and what affect does that charge have upon other objects in its vicinity? The answer to this question begins with an understanding of the structure of matter. Understanding charge as a fundamental quantity demands that we have an understanding of the structure of an atom. So we begin this unit with what might seem to many students to be a short review of a unit from a Chemistry course.
History of Atomic Structure

The search for the atom began as a philosophical question. It was the natural philosophers of ancient Greece that began the search for the atom by asking such questions as: What is stuff composed of? What is the structure of material objects? Is there a basic unit from which all objects are made? As early as 400 B.C., some Greek philosophers proposed that matter is made of indivisible building blocks known as atomos. (Atomos in Greek means indivisible.) To these early Greeks, matter could not be continuously broken down and divided indefinitely. Rather, there was a basic unit or building block which was indivisible and foundational to its structure. This indivisible building block of which all matter was composed became known as the atom.

The early Greeks were simply philosophers. They did not perform experiments to test their theories. In fact, science as an experimental discipline did not emerge as a credible and popular practice until sometime during the 1600s. So the search for the atom remained a philosophical inquiry for a couple of millennia. From the 1600s to the present century, the search for the atom became an experimental pursuit. Several scientists are notable; among them are Robert Boyle, John Dalton, J.J. Thomson, Ernest Rutherford, and Neils Bohr.

Boyle's studies (middle to late 1600s) of gaseous substances promoted the idea that there were different types of atoms known as elements. Dalton (early 1800s) conducted a variety of experiments to show that different elements can combine in fixed ratios of masses to form compounds. Dalton subsequently proposed one of the first theories of atomic behavior which was supported by actual experimental evidence.
English scientist J.J. Thomson's cathode ray experiments (end of the 19th century) led to the discovery of the negatively charged electron and the first ideas of the structure of these indivisible atoms. Thomson proposed the Plum Pudding Model, suggesting that an atom's structure resembles the favorite English dessert - plum pudding. The raisins dispersed amidst the plum pudding are analogous to negatively charged electrons immersed in a sea of positive charge.

Nearly a decade after Thomson, Ernest Rutherford's famous gold foil experiments led to the nuclear model of atomic structure. Rutherford's model suggested that the atom consisted of a densely packed core of positive charge known as the nucleus surrounded by negatively charged electrons. While the nucleus was unique to the Rutherford atom, even more surprising was the proposal that an atom consisted mostly of empty space. Most the mass was packed into the nucleus that was abnormally small compared to the actual size of the atom.

Neils Bohr improved upon Rutherford's nuclear model (1913) by explaining that the electrons were present in orbits outside the nucleus. The electrons were confined to specific orbits of fixed radius, each characterized by their own discrete levels of energy. While electrons could be forced from one orbit to another orbit, it could never occupy the space between orbits.
Bohr's view of quantized energy levels was the precursor to modern quantum mechanical views of the atoms. The mathematical nature of quantum mechanics prohibits a discussion of its details and restricts us to a brief conceptual description of its features. Quantum mechanics suggests that an atom is composed of a variety of subatomic particles. The three main subatomic particles are the proton, electron and neutron. The proton and neutron are the more massive of the three subatomic particles; they are located in the nucleus of the atom, forming the dense core of the atom. The proton is charged positively. The neutron does not possess a charge and is said to be neutral. The protons and neutrons are bound tightly together within the nucleus of the atom. Outside the nucleus are concentric spherical regions of space known as electron shells. The shells are the home of the negatively charged electrons. Each shell is characterized by a distinct energy level. Outer shells have higher energy levels and are characterized as being lower in stability. Electrons in higher energy shells can move down to lower energy shells; this movement is accompanied by the release of energy. Similarly, electrons in lower energy shells can be induced to move to the higher energy outer shells by the addition of energy to the atom. If provided sufficient energy, an electron can be removed from an atom and be freed from its attraction to the nucleus.

Application of Atomic Structure to Static Electricity

This brief excursion into the history of atomic theory leads to some important conclusions about the structure of matter which will be of utmost importance to our study of static electricity. Those conclusions are summarized here:

* All material objects are composed of atoms. There are different kinds of atoms known as elements; these elements can combine to form compounds. Different compounds have distinctly different properties. Material objects are composed of atoms and molecules of these elements and compounds, thus providing different materials with different electrical properties.
* An atom consists of a nucleus and a vast region of space outside the nucleus. Electrons are present in the region of space outside the nucleus. They are negatively charged and weakly bound to the atom. Electrons are often removed from and added to an atom by normal everyday occurrences. These occurrences are the focus of this Static Electricity unit of The Physics Classroom.
* The nucleus of the atom contains positively charged protons and neutral neutrons. These protons and neutrons are not removable or perturbable by usual everyday methods. It would require some form of high-energy nuclear occurrence to disturb the nucleus and subsequently dislodge its positively charged protons. These high-energy occurrences are fortunately not an everyday event and they are certainly not the subject of this unit of The Physics Classroom. One sure truth of this unit is that the protons and neutrons will remain within the nucleus of the atom. Electrostatic phenomenon can never be explained by the movement of protons.

A variety of phenomena will be pondered, investigated and explained through the course of this Static Electricity unit. Each phenomenon will be explained using a model of matter described by the above three statements. The phenomena will range from a rubber balloon sticking to a wooden door to the clinging together of clothes which have tumbled in the dryer to the bolt of lightning seen in the evening sky. Each of these phenomenon will be explained in terms of electron movement - both within the atoms and molecules of a material and from the atoms and molecules of one material to those of another. In the next section of Lesson 1 we will explore how electron movement can be used to explain how and why objects acquire an electrostatic charge.

What is stress?

2009-05-10T19:55:00.003+07:00

We hear about stress all the time. It’s on the news, in the newspapers, people talk about it and often when we ask someone how they are, their answer is, ‘Oh, I’m just so stressed!’ We witness it manifesting in people
and ourselves in many different ways. Some people get irritable and lose their sense of humour, some withdraw or become obnoxious, others feel fatigued and overwhelmed.
Stress is the body’s response to what is happening in our lives and can take many forms. Some stressful situations in our lives are sudden and diffi cult, others life changing, but most are just part of our everyday life.
With everyday stress, we deal with it along the way and it doesn’t necessarily negatively affect our wellbeing. But it is when the demands of our days exceed our ability to cope that we fi nd ourselves out of balance.
1 Stress reduces our capacity to be productive in all aspects of our lives.
2 It can negatively affect all of our relationships and it can also make us very sick.
3 Unmanaged stress can cause depression, which has been described as the common cold of mental illness.
That’s why we need to take this seriously; to realise that if the pressures of our lives are greater than our capacity to cope, then we need to take responsibility to make the changes in our lives to protect our wellbeing

Global warming

2009-04-29T15:19:00.003+07:00

Use your head to cooling down around.........

Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-twentieth century and its projected continuation. Global surface temperature increased 0.74 ± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) during the last century.^[1]^[A] The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes that anthropogenic greenhouse gases are responsible for most of the observed temperature increase since the middle of the twentieth century,^[1] and that natural phenomena such as solar variation and volcanoes probably had a small warming effect from pre-industrial times to 1950 and a small cooling effect afterward.^[2]^[3] These basic conclusions have been endorsed by more than 40 scientific societies and academies of science,^[B] including all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries.^[4]

Climate model projections summarized in the latest IPCC report indicate that global surface temperature will probably rise a further 1.1 to 6.4 °C (2.0 to 11.5 °F) during the twenty-first century.^[1] The uncertainty in this estimate arises from the use of models with differing climate sensitivity, and the use of differing estimates of future greenhouse gas emissions. Some other uncertainties include how warming and related changes will vary from region to region around the globe. Most studies focus on the period up to 2100. However, warming is expected to continue beyond 2100 even if emissions stop, because of the large heat capacity of the oceans and the long lifetime of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.^[5]^[6]

Increasing global temperature will cause sea levels to rise and will change the amount and pattern of precipitation, probably including expansion of subtropical deserts.^[7] The continuing retreat of glaciers, permafrost and sea ice is expected, with the Arctic region being particularly affected. Other likely effects include shrinkage of the Amazon rainforest and Boreal forests, increases in the intensity of extreme weather events, species extinctions and changes in agricultural yields.

Political and public debate continues regarding the appropriate response to global warming. The available options are mitigation to reduce further emissions; adaptation to reduce the damage caused by warming; and, more speculatively, geoengineering to reverse global warming. Most national governments have signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

WE LIVE IN AN EXPANDING UNIVERSE

2009-03-29T16:31:00.004+07:00

47- With power did We construct heaven. Verily, We are expanding it.
51-The Dispersing, 47

Is the universe infinite? Or is it finite in a steady state? From the very beginning this has been a subject of debate between great minds. Hot debates and ratiocination of all kinds failed to clarify this dilemma. This had once been the subject of philosophical speculations before it yielded its place to the science of physics. Some of the great minds argued that the universe was not a confined space, while others contended that its boundaries were drawn. The Quran describes it as a continuously expanding and dynamic universe. According to this description, the universe has a new aspect every instant that deviates from the concept of an infinite space; its perpetual expansion defies the concept of a confined and steady state universe. Thus, the Quran propounds a third alternative, leaving the heated controversy of thinkers in abeyance.

This may contribute to the formulation of a judgment for the inquiring minds, probing whether the Quran is God’s revelation or not. We have, on the one hand, Muhammad in the desert, neither a philosopher nor a physicist, and, on the other hand, the assumptions of great thinkers and philosophers such as Aristotle, Ptolemy,Giordano Bruno, Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton, to name but a few. The greatest minds in history, basing their arguments on observations and formulas they had ingeniously devised, claimed either that the universe had its confines or that it was an endless space, but it occurred to none of them to think of a dynamic expanding universe, until the 20th century when Edwin Hubble, by means of a telescope, demonstrated that the universe was expanding. The theory of expansion of the universe was first advanced in the 1920s. Until the descent of the Quran no other source had made such an assertion!
MUHAMMAD’S TELESCOPE
Unbelievers contended that the Quran was Muhammad’s own fabrication and not the revelation of God. How then would these dissenters explain the fact that Muhammad had been the only person who was aware of the expanding universe long before the 1920s.

Could it be that in the 600s he had invented a telescope similar to the one contrived in the 1900s? Could it be that he had been familiar with the handling of such a telescope and acquainted with the motion of stars and that he had concealed it from his fellow men? If those who accused the Prophet of lunacy and alleged that in his delusional states he imagined himself the messenger of God were justified in their claims, how would they account for the fact that he knew facts not known to his contemporaries, facts that were to be discovered 1300 years after his revelation of them? If those people assert that the Prophet had devised a religion to serve his own ends, how can they explain that his so-called delusions materialized after a lapse of 1300 years? His pronouncements at the time did not promote his interests in any way; quite the reverse was the case, since he unwittingly gave his enemies a hint they might take advantage of. Can a person whose own interests prevail over the interests of others declare something not to his own advantage that was sure to be bitterly censured and much derided by those whose naked eyes failed to observe the expansion of the universe? If, despite this, a person came up with the contention that Muhammad was an intelligent man who might have perceived this truth, what sort of an intelligence might this have been?

And, instead of boasting of having been the depository of such knowledge, why would he have preferred to tell an untruth and claim that this was not his own discovery but the revelation by God? While the inventor or discoverer of a pin is inclined to brag about his breakthrough, why on earth would Muhammad choose to be modest and categorically declare that the Quran was not his own production, but the revelation of God? Was this due to humility? Would these people - who had denied his prophethood and accused him of having been an impostor - have dared qualify him with the laudable attribute of “humility?”

DISCOVERY OF THE EXPANDING UNIVERSE
There was a gap in Newton’s physics. Newton believed in an endlessly vast and static universe. His law of gravity encountered a problem. How was it that the physical bodies, in the course of eons, defied their mutual attractions and did not collapse into a unity? The formula that Einstein devised abandoned the absolute notions of space and time as reference points for all objects in the universe. Basing his studies on Einstein’s formulas, Alexander Friedmann, a Russian physicist, discovered that the universe must be expanding. Georges Lemaître, a Belgian cleric, astronomer and cosmologist, formulated that the universe had begun in a cataclysmic explosion of a small, primeval superatom, like the growing of an oak tree from an acorn. This theory explained the recession of galaxies within the framework of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity. This idea was so incredible that even Einstein had problems accepting it, despite the fact that this all had originated from his own formulas. Einstein, rather, countered that physics was not the forte of Lemaître, and the universe was an infinite expanse and in a steady state.

Lemaître’s theory posited that the universe was expanding. This was a statement that no philosopher and no scientist had ever before set forth. Kant had said in his Critique of Pure Reason that this was an enigma unsolvable by human intelligence. This theory fit everything and explained the reason why the universe did not collapse in spite of gravity. The key had fit into the lock. It was the correct explanation of the enigma. However, this statement met with the usual adverse reaction: “No, it is not the truth...”

Remaining outside the sphere of theoretical controversy, American astronomer Hubble was, about the same time, making observations with his sophisticated telescope in the Mount Wilson observatory. He observed that galaxies were receding from each other, which proved that the universe was expanding. In answer to those who said they could not believe in things their eyes had not witnessed, Hubble’s discovery led to the following declaration: “Now that you see it, you have got to believe it.” Hubble showed this by the Doppler Effect. Thus the wavelengths of receding bodies prolonged in the spectrum of light waves would shift to red, while, if the bodies approached each other, the wavelengths would shorten, shifting to blue. The light that came from galaxies that shifted to red showed that the galaxies were receding. In line with this observation, Hubble discovered a striking law: the speed of galaxies that receded was directly proportional to the distance between galaxies. The farther away a galaxy stood, the more its speed of recession accelerated. The result was tested again and again. In 1950, a high-magnification telescope was installed on Mount Palomar in the USA, the largest instrument of its kind. The new tests and controls justified this observation. The measurements made pointed to the fact that the creation of the universe occurred about 10-15 billion years ago.

Both Einstein and Lemaître took an interest in Hubble’s work; Einstein, who did not agree with Lemaître at first, eventually acknowledged during a conference that Lemaître was right after all. He confessed that his failure to endorse these findings had been the gravest error in his life. Thus it was that the fact that the universe was of a dynamic nature and expanding, confirmed by observations, was also validated by the great physicist Einstein.

In the examples presented by Hubble and Lemaître, we see illustrated how a physicist arrives at a conclusion both in theory and through observation. While Lemaître demonstrated how he had made inferences from Einstein’s formulas to substantiate his theoretical discoveries, Hubble presented the data of his observations and his conclusions.

As we see, the result obtained by physicists is the consequence of cumulative and collective bits of knowledge and research. The Creator of physical laws provides the answer in the Quran to the issues of towering importance throughout human history. The Quran’s presentation of scientific facts is clear, direct, and concise; it is different than the presentation of scientists, which tends to be complicated by scientific methods and procedures. The provider of this answer does not have to go through all the labyrinths a scientist has to. The Quran’s method is perfectly straightforward, unswerving and explicit.

If we had the possibility of looking at the universe from above and somebody asked us to describe what we saw, our answer would be that it was expanding. To achieve the Quran’s revelation of this fact 1400 years ago, man would have needed access to the assistance of accumulated scientific data acquired throughout long years and to sophisticated telescopes. When people claim that science and religion oppose each other, the Quran furnishes answers to the most complicated scientific problems. Observations made by sophisticated telescopes today confirm the statements of the Quran.

The Quran, perfectly aware of the human psyche with its prescience, states that nonbelievers will insist on their convictions regardless how many miracles are presented to them. Some ask: “Why did the people also not believe in Jesus, who had performed miracles and healed the sick and the blind?” This example demonstrates why the majority of people did not believe in Christ and the other prophets, despite their miracles. Miracles change in fact as time goes by, but the negative attitude of most humans remains unchanged.

REASON FOR THE USE OF THE ROYAL PLURAL
I think it advisable to explain the reason for the use of “We” in the verse analyzed in this chapter. God uses both the royal plural “We” and the first person singular “I.” Some languages use the first person plural “we” to express grandeur and exalted rank.

In the hundreds of references addressing God in the second person, the pronoun used is “Thou” and never the plural “You” or “Ye.” The thousands of references made to Him as a third person always use the pronoun “He” and never “They.” References in the Quran to God always use either the second or the third person, and none of them as a second or third person plural. Thousands of times in the Quran, God is referred to as “Allah,” “Gracious (Rahman),” Merciful (Raheem),” and “Lord (Rab)” and all of these words are in the singular, never the plural.

(source : www.quranmiracles.com)

The expanding universe
Together, billions and billions of stars like our sun form gigantic star systems - galaxies like our own Milky Way galaxy, which probably doesn't look all that different from the galaxy NGC 4414 shown here:

The cosmological models of general relativity paint a rather simple picture of a universe filled with a collection of such galaxies freely drifting through space. These galaxies are evenly distributed, and they drift in an orderly way, following the expansion of space. This expansion is shown in the following animation. The animation depicts part of a two-dimensional slice of the universe, including a number of galaxies, and it is certainly not to scale; all distances and sizes are chosen for easy viewing, not for verisimilitude.

The animation shows 100 million years worth of the expansion of the universe, as seen from our own galaxy (shown in red) which, as our personal reference point, remains firmly in the centre. Time is shown in the upper left corner (where "My" stands for "million years"), and the galaxies visibly move away from our own. The distances from our galaxy to the blue and green galaxies (measured in light years, abbreviated ly) are shown at both the beginning and the end of the animation. At the end of the brief clip, we see that the distances to the blue and green galaxies have doubled, and so have all distances between all of the galaxies shown!

For each galaxy, the average speed with which it recedes from our own red galaxy is the distance it covers, divided by the time it needs for its motion. To calculate the distance covered by the green galaxy, we compare its distance from the red galaxy at the beginning (1 million ly) to the distance at the end of the observation period (2 million ly). We thus find that during the 100 million years shown in the animation, its distance has increased by a million light years, corresponding to an average speed ofv = 1 million light years/100 million years = 0.01 light years/year
= 3000 kilometers/second
On the other hand, for the blue galaxy with its initial distance of two and its final distance of four million light years, corresponding to an increase by 4-2=2 light years, we obtainv = 2 million light years/100 million years = 0.02 light years/year
= 6000 kilometers/second.
This illustrates a direct consequence of cosmic expansion: the speed with which a galaxy recedes from us is directly proportional to its initial distance - double distance, double speed, in our example. This is called the Hubble relation: the further a galaxy is away from us, the faster it recedes.
Finally, a caveat. There's one aspect of cosmic expansion that the animation above cannot show: In this expansion, the points of view of all the galaxies are equally valid. Had we chosen a different galaxy to form the immobile center point of our animation, the animation would look just the same, all galaxies moving away from the observer, and their average speeds and distances following the same Hubble relation as above - double distance, double speed. The expansion has no center: all distances increase by the same factor, and every observer on a galaxy sees the same expanding cosmos.

from : http://www.aei.mpg.de/einsteinOnline/en/elementary/cosmology/expansion/

विडियो फ्रॉम dhenok61

2009-03-01T20:54:00.003+07:00

2009-02-25T18:00:00.008+07:00

Why ?

2009-01-07T16:35:00.001+07:00

Mount Cereme

2009-01-07T13:41:00.004+07:00

Mount Cereme or Mount Ciremai is a symmetrical stratovolcano lies in West Java, Indonesia. A 4.5 × 5 km wide of the Geger Halang caldera is found at the summit. Eruptions are relatively infrequent in historical time, but explosive activity and lahars from the summit have been recorded.[1] Cereme is the highest mountain in West Java.

Some endemic or endangered flora and fauna are being protected in this national park, such as Pinus merkusii, Castanopsis javanica, Fragraera blumii, Villubrunes rubescens, Macaranga denticulatan, Lithocarpus sundaicus, Elacocarpus , Ardisia cymosa, Platea latifolia, Phantera pardus, Javan Muntjac, Zaglossus brujini, Javan Surili, Spizaetus bartelsii and Python sp.
This photo is takeable along the road from Kuningan to Ciperna portal toll road.It's so beautiful..

Future Education... Holistic

2008-12-20T20:17:00.002+07:00

SCIENCE EDUCATION

2008-09-24T02:03:00.002+07:00

Why Teach Science?
In the modern world, some knowledge of science is essential for every-
one. It is the opinion of this committee that science should be as nonnegotiable
a part of basic education as are language arts and mathematics. It is
important to teach science because of the following:
1. Science is a significant part of human culture and represents one of
the pinnacles of human thinking capacity.
2. It provides a laboratory of common experience for development of
language, logic, and problem-solving skills in the classroom.
3. A democracy demands that its citizens make personal and community
decisions about issues in which scientific information plays a fundamental
role, and they hence need a knowledge of science as well as an understanding
of scientific methodology.
4. For some students, it will become a lifelong vocation or avocation.
5. The nation is dependent on the technical and scientific abilities of its
citizens for its economic competitiveness and national needs.

What Should Be the Goals of Elementary and
Middle School Science?
To quote Albert Einstein, the goal of education is “to produce indepen-
dently thinking and acting individuals.” The eventual goal of science education
is to produce individuals capable of understanding and evaluating information
that is, or purports to be, scientific in nature and of making decisions
that incorporate that information appropriately, and, furthermore, to pro-
duce a sufficient number and diversity of skilled and motivated future scien-
tists, engineers, and other science-based professionals.
The science curriculum in the elementary grades, like that for other
subject areas, should be designed for all students to develop critical basic
knowledge and basic skills, interests, and habits of mind that will lead to
productive efforts to learn and understand the subject more deeply in later
grades. If this is done well, then all five of the reasons to teach science will
be well served. It is not necessary in these grades to distinguish between
those who will eventually become scientists and those who will chiefly use
their knowledge of science in making personal and societal choices. A good
elementary science program will provide the basis for either path in later
life.
The specific content of elementary school science has been outlined in
multiple documents, including the National Science Education Standards,the Benchmarks for Science Literacy, and multiple state standards documents.
Teachers are held accountable to particular state and local requirements. It is
not the role of this report to specify a list of content to be taught. However,
it is important to note that what this report says about science learning
always assumes that there is a strong basis of factual knowledge and con-
ceptual development in the science curriculum, and that the goal of any
methodology for teaching is to facilitate student learning and understanding
of this content, as well as developing their skills in, and understanding of,
the methods of scientific observation, experimentation, modeling, and analysis.
It is often said that children are natural scientists. Experts in child devel-
opment have debated this issue, not on the basis of the basic facts of children’s
behavior, but rather on the relation between that behavior and the essential
aspects of scientific thinking (Giere, 1996; Gopnik, 1996; Gopnik and Wellman,
1992; Harris, 1994; Kuhn, 1989; Metz, 1995, 1997; Vosniadou and Brewer,
1992, 1994). Rather than attempting to resolve this debate, we simply acknowledge
the fact that children bring to science class a natural curiosity
and a set of ideas and conceptual frameworks that incorporate their experiences
of the natural world and other information that they have learned.
Since these experiences vary, children at a given age have a wide range in
their skills, knowledge, and conceptual development. A teacher therefore
needs to be able to evaluate each child’s knowledge and conceptual and
skill development, as well as the child’s level of metacognition about his or
her own knowledge, skills, and concepts, in order to provide a learning
environment that moves each child’s development in all these areas. A key
question for instruction is thus how to adapt the instructional goals to the
existing knowledge and skills of the learners, as well as how to choose
instructional techniques that will be most effective.
Each of the views of science articulated above highlights particular modes
of thought that are essential to that view. These views are not mutually
exclusive descriptions of science, but rather each stresses particular aspects.
Since students need to progress in all aspects, it is useful for teachers to have
a clear understanding of each of these components of scientific development,
just as they need a clear understanding of the subject matter, the
specific science content, that they are teaching. It is also useful at times to
focus instruction on development of specific skills, in balance with a focus
on the learning of specific facts or the understanding of a particular concep-
tual framework.
Thus, if one looks from the perspective of science as a process of rea-
soning about evidence, one sees that logical argumentation and problem-
solving skills are important. Certain aspects of metacognition are also high-
lighted, such as the ability to be aware when one’s previously held convictions
are in conflict with an observation. If one looks at science as a process of
theory change, one sees that teachers must recognize the role of students’prior conceptions about a subject and facilitate the necessary processes of
conceptual change and development. Finally, when one looks at science as
a process of participation in the culture of scientific practice, attention is
drawn to the ways in which children’s individual cultural and social backgrounds
can, on one hand, create barriers to science participation and learn-
ing due to possible conflicts of cultural norms or practices with those of
science, and, on the other hand, provide opportunities for contributions,
particularly from students from nonmainstream cultures, that enrich the dis-
course in the science classroom. One also sees a range of practices, such as
model building and data representation, that each in itself is a specific skill
and thus needs to be incorporated and taught in science classrooms.
It is thus clear that multiple strategies are needed, some focused primarily
on key skills or specific knowledge, others on particular conceptual
understanding, and yet others on metacognition. The issues of what children
bring to school and of how teaching can build on it to foster robust
science learning with this rich multiplicity of aspects are the core topics of
this report.

Solid bioenergy sources

2008-07-07T04:37:00.017+07:00

The largest group of solid bioenergy sources is products made from wood.These are obtained when firewood is taken from forests and when waste is utilized from the industrial processing of wood products. In many places by-products from agriculture, such as straw, are also used for generating energy from biomass.
When forests are thinned, apart from the trunk of the tree, which is used for the furniture and construction industries, wood residues of a lesser quality are also collected. For each hectare of forest, between 0.4 and 0.8 tonnes of air dry firewood can be obtained from these forest wood residues.Together with the other quantities of wood residues that are produced during forest maintenance, this gives an annual fuel yield from a permanently used forest area of around 1.5 t/ha.
In modern wood harvesting, the trees are felled by harvester machines (Figure above). These cut down the tree using a gripper arm with a chainsaw mounted on it. In addition, harvester machines can automatically remove the branches from the trunk, strip off the dark wood bark, and cut the trunk into transportable lengths.This means that part of the value-increasing wood processing is carried out before the wood leaves the forest.

When the round trunks are machined into planks and beams, large amounts of residues are produced. However, for the most part these are utilized in the wood industry for other materials.Woodchips and shavings that are free of any bark, for example, are the base products for high-value chipboard sheets (Figure above ).

However, another part of these residues still has fragments of dark bark attached and is therefore unsuitable for utilization as a wood product (Figure above).These bark pieces are ideal for energy recycling. Because of the high ash content, these residues are utilized mainly in larger heat supply stations and combined heat and power plants as a co-firing substrate.
Other significant residues from agriculture include straw (Figure below) and other stem products such as hay.These post-harvest residues are often available locally in large utilizable quantities.

Mechanised straw harvest with bale press
Photo: Claas AG/www.claas.de

Straw is a natural residual product
Photo: creativ collection/www.sesolutions.de
The straw from 1 ha of cereal has an energy content of 73 GJ.This is roughly equivalent to 2000 litres of heating oil. However, straw and other stem products have combustion characteristics that are different from those of ligneous fuels.The ash melting point and emission behaviour of straw-type biomass mean that different technical approaches to utilization are required. To date, it has been possible to achieve large-scale energy recycling of stemproduct fuels in cogeneration plants, but not in decentralized installations.
Yet it is not only residue materials produced directly with the creation of biomass that can be considered for energy utilization. Products at the end of their lifecycle that are no longer useful as a material asset are ideal for energy recycling.The processing and combustion of old wood is one example of how this kind of bioenergy product can be obtained from secondary raw materials (Figure below).

Industrial wood waste processing
Photo: Dobelmann/www.sesolutions.de
Because of its previous use, this product can be contaminated with foreign matter such as chemicals, paints or similar. For this reason, many countries have restrictions on the energy recycling of old wood. Burning the wood in small combustion systems is often allowed only if the wood processing has been purely mechanical and the wood contains only insignificant contaminants (Figure below).

Mechanically prepared wood
Photo: Dobelmann/www.sesolutions.de
Another important category of residues that is not necessarily part of the old wood sector is wood residues from landscape management (Figure below).These occur during maintenance works by roads and waterways, and through work in parks.Wood residues from landscape management are usually a mix of wood, leaves and stem products. Only very rarely would the utilization of this mixture in a new product be considered.

Residues from landscape management
Photo: Dobelmann/www.sesolutions.de

Energy utilization suggests itself as a means of disposing of these materials.The combustible quality of these wood residue mixes can be classed as low, owing to the large number of impurities. Because of the soil that is generally still attached, these materials have a high ash content.The other visible impurities such as plastic wrappers, bags and other man-made garbage lead to high levels of toxic matter, with the result that the law demands the controlled disposal of the ash.
First published by James & James (Science Publishers) Ltd in the UK and USA in 2005
© The German Solar Energy Society (DGS), Ecofys 2005

2008-05-31T07:15:00.001+07:00

Why Holistic Education?

2008-04-27T15:32:00.000+07:00

Parents, in increasing numbers, are seeking alternatives to mainstream education. Few could criticize the commitment to academic excellence that most schools and teachers have and work hard to actualize. But more and more parents realize that just learning academics is not enough, and they see young people in their communities suffering from a lack of needed learning, and society suffering as well.

Parents worry about the negative social influence they see affecting their children. Parents see themselves having less impact on their children's behavior, relationships, and attitudes than the media and marketing which directly targets children. As a result children's senses of themselves and self-images are under pressure. This pressure is expressed in:

Increased competitiveness in many aspects of a child's social life, such as sports, out-of-school activities, and of course, school.
Obsessive concern for their "look," from their body shape to their clothes.
Violence in many forms, from the physical to the psychological and emotional.

Parents are also worried about negative learning attitudes they see developing in their children. Parents saw their children as infants eager to learn, and this eagerness dissipated as these same children's schooling increased. Learning becomes a necessary chore, driven by rewards and punishments, and too often devoid of direct meaning in their children's lives.

Many parents also look at our current society in which social problems seem to be getting worse; in which those considered successful are too often greedy, corrupt, and brutal; in which families and communities seem increasingly dysfunctional; and they ask, "Why aren't we as humans learning what we need to know in order to live good and meaningful lives?"

It doesn't appear that we will learn such things from learning more mathematics, literature, or history. Parents see the need for their children to learn these other things as well as academics, and they look for schools that give time, attention, energy, and resources, to such learning. Parents generally do not come to holistic education from philosophical musings, but from a perceived need for their children that they feel is not currently met.

Learn more..

Holisitc Education : An Introduction ...

2008-04-27T14:45:00.003+07:00

Purpose of Holistic Education

The purpose of holistic education is to prepare students to meet the challenges of living as well as academics. Holistic education believes it is important for young people to learn:
About themselves.
About healthy relationships and pro-social behavior.
Social development.
Emotional development.
Resilience.
To see beauty, have awe, experience transcendence, and appreciate some sense of "truths."

Consider your life's greatest challenges. What did you need to know to overcome the obstacles you faced? Consider your greatest successes. What did you need to know in order to achieve those successes? Then ask yourself, how many of those things that I needed to know did I learn in school?

For thousands of years before schools there were social groups which taught people about the great adventure of being human; its trials and tribulations, its challenges, and its enormous possibilities for human goodness and even greatness. These groups were extended families, communities or tribes or clans, and religions. For the most part, these groups have disappeared or become compartmentalized in people's lives.

Now, it is predominantly popular culture (the media, music) and schools from which young people can learn about what it means to be human. But culture has it own agenda (not the welfare of children), and schools were not designed to replace extended families, communities, and religions. They were designed to prepare people for the world of work; to give them the skill sets that would help them up the ladder of material success.

Learn more in an interesting link...

The Value of Science Education

2008-03-23T17:34:00.002+07:00

The utilization of subject-matter found in the present life-experience of the learner towards science is perhaps the best illustration that can be found of the basic principle of using existing experience as the means of carrying learners on to a wider, more refined, and better organized world.

—John Dewey, Experience and Education, 1938

Every fall, several million children mark the beginning of their formal education by entering kindergarten. These five-years-olds are full of enthusiasm and excitement. They will ride the school bus like the big kids and have a chance to see what school is all about. Parents, too, see this moment as a turning point. School provides an opportunity for children to discover the answers to questions they often ask, such as, How are rocks made? and Why do ships float? All those close to children hope that school will continue to spark children's natural love of learning.

Teachers use many strategies to keep that love of learning alive. To stimulate their students' natural curiosity, some teachers arrange field trips to wetlands, rivers, and lakes as part of their study of natural ecosystems. To keep young imaginations flourishing, other teachers bring duck eggs to school and encourage students to care for them and imagine what the ducklings will be like when they hatch. To instill a love of experimental inquiry, teachers use materials such as batteries and bulbs or rocks and minerals as the starting point for asking questions, experimenting, developing theories, and communicating their ideas

THE LIMITATIONS OF TRADITIONAL CLASSROOMS
Why did this lesson fail to hold the children's interest? Why were the
children restless and seemingly unmotivated to explore the ideas presented
during the science lesson?
For one thing, the children did not do science. They did not examine
objects, observe phenomena, design experiments, collect data, or discuss their
ideas. There were no opportunities for independent thinking and problem
solving. Instead, they simply read about science. The children gained very little,
because the book they were reading was describing things they knew or cared
little about. Most children today have never seen a windmill firsthand and have
no idea what a pumping machine is. The fact that a windmill can generate
electricity is also meaningless to these children;

to them, electricity is something that happens when they turn on a light switch.
"Work" and "energy" are abstract ideas that have never been made concrete or
meaningful to them. Because these ideas are beyond the realm of their
experience, the children have little desire to explore them further.
Experience is the key factor. Research on children's learning has revealed
that when children do not have firsthand experiences with the things they are
learning about in school, the information that the curriculum seeks to convey
will often not make sense to them. Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, devoted
his life to observing children and drawing conclusions about their intellectual
growth. His work laid the foundation for further studies of how children learn, a
field that is now called cognitive science. One key finding that has emerged
from this work is that children learn actively and they do so through direct
experiences with the physical world.

Student's firewalking experience reinforce learning process toward understanding about the concept of heat transfer.

Spring is Aurora Season

2008-03-22T05:45:00.001+07:00

March 20, 2008: What are the signs of spring? They are as familiar as a blooming Daffodil, a songbird at dawn, a surprising shaft of warmth from the afternoon sun.
And, oh yes, don't forget the aurora borealis.
Spring is aurora season. For reasons not fully understood by scientists, the weeks around the vernal equinox are prone to Northern Lights. Canadians walking their dogs after dinner, Scandinavians popping out to the sauna, Alaskan Huskies on the Iditarod trail—all they have to do is look up and behold, green curtains of light dancing across the night sky. Spring has arrived!
This is a bit of a puzzle. Auroras are caused by solar activity, but the Sun doesn't know what season it is on Earth. Yet it seemed to know on March 1st when these lights erupted over Tromso, Norway:

"It was a very powerful outburst of Northern Lights," says photographer Bjorn Jorgensen. "The ground actually turned green!"
Such outbursts are called auroral substorms and they have long puzzled space physicists. Often sighted in springtime, "substorms erupt with little warning and sometimes shocking intensity," says UCLA space physicist Vassilis Angelopoulos. "They're a big mystery."
Sign up for EXPRESS SCIENCE NEWS delivery

Angelopoulos is the Principal Investigator of NASA's THEMIS mission--a fleet of five spacecraft launched in Feb. 2007 to study the substorm phenomenon. NASA's Polar spacecraft, which can detect auroras in broad daylight using special UV filters, has also joined the effort.

It is a puzzle worthy of many spacecraft. Underlying each display of pretty lights is a potent geomagnetic storm. THEMIS observed one recently with a total energy of five hundred thousand billion (5 x 10 exp 14) Joules. "That's approximately equivalent to the energy of a magnitude 5 earthquake," says Angelopoulos. Possible side-effects of such storms range from satellite malfunctions to home power outages; telecommunications, air traffic and GPS systems are all vulnerable. "In a society that relies increasingly on space technology, understanding substorms is vital."

THEMIS may have found the substorm power supply--and a springtime connection:

"The satellites have detected magnetic 'ropes' connecting Earth's upper atmosphere directly to the Sun," says Dave Sibeck, project scientist for the mission at the Goddard Space Flight Center. "We believe that solar wind particles flow in along these ropes, providing energy for geomagnetic storms and auroras."

Above : A magnetic map of a magnetospheric "rope" observed in cross-section by the THEMIS satellites on May 20, 2007. [Larger image]

It turns out that rope-like magnetic connections between Sun and Earth are favored in springtime. It's a matter of geometry: As Earth goes around in its orbit, Earth's tilted magnetic poles make different angles with respect to the Sun, tipping back and forth with a one-year cadence. Around the time of the equinox, Earth's magnetic field is best oriented for "connecting-up" with the Sun.

But wait, there are two equinoxes, spring and fall, with similar magnetic geometry. Indeed, studies show that fall is aurora season, too. Geomagnetic disturbances are almost twice as likely in spring and fall vs. winter and summer, according to 75 years of historical records analyzed by solar physicist David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center: diagram.

So, 'tis the season for auroras--and lots of data for THEMIS. Says Sibeck, "we welcome the spring!"

Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

Please translate the above article, and send to your teacher!
The translation result are :
1. Pradya Emeralda 7 A, score : 8,5
2.

Let's Love Beauty and Prevent Global Warming

2008-03-21T10:55:00.001+07:00

It's time for us, as a student, to be aware that environment
around our life must be preserved, and even need to be developed into beatiful surroundings, to make our life
positively braced up.

A few days ago an enthusiastic student report his trip to me, gave me a lot of beautiful pictures. Look four beuatiful
photos below. Can you preserve at least one flowerpot to
love beauty and to participate into global warming prevention.
Who will start first?

The Jungle Reportage Assignment

2008-03-20T09:50:00.009+07:00

Action 1:
Look at the following actions. Explain : is there heat transfer process in your sliding motion ?

2. Why does the water spurt when your body reach the bottom part?

3. It's better to use the swimming tire tube for the following action. Why? give an explanation.

4. The water in the bucket was spilled. Why? Explain : what kind of energies involved in this process?

5. Why were you not sank when you sit above the swimming tire tube, while your density greater than the water one? What is the function of the swimming tube in this case?

6. The swimming tube and you always move following the water flow, while you didn't do anything. Why? Give an explanation.

7. You like to choose recumbent position when you slid down. Is there sliding speed difference between sit and recumbent position?

Write your anwer in a special report. You can attach photo and video CD.
Don't forget to collect your homework from fisika smp (posting lama) at the end of next week.

All of your comment have been deleted to avoid "copy and paste", du u andersten....

Note
The finished report :
1. Pradnya Paramitha (eh..Emeralda, I am sorry I forgot...), 7A , Score 77.5
2. Moh. Lukman , 7A , Score 80,0
3. Fitri Fauziah , 7H , Score 79,5
4. Dwiko W.P. , 7C , Score 75
5. I Made Devan ,7C , Score 75
6. mirdan`s 7b , Score 75
7. gian Kelas: 7c , Score 75
8. azhar , 7b, Score 75
9. Aburizal 7B/01 , 73
10.Faishal RD Kelas : 7b , 75
11. Rifqi . R Kelas : VII b , 75
12. hario r (16)7b , 75
13. Aldi Masharry Putra Kelas:7B,75
14.Reggy Nur Sya'ban 7-D, 75
15.muhammad irawan f ,Class :7c, 72
16.Fitri Aghnia Hidayat Class : 7H, 80
17.Eka Yulrizal ,Kelas:7B, 75
18.Radhityo Rahadian /32, 75
19.Rafsa 7A , 80
20.arrazy 7d. , 80
21.Fitri Ana Dewi ,7H,75
22.-nita- 7b/24,75
23.-nur'ayni tp- 7b/34,75
24.Adam Sulaiman ,7B,80
25.M. Naufal A. 7A/19, 77,5
26.Ghina Rahmadianti M ,7a/11,80
27.dwita A.P VII A,78
28.M.Najmi.F.S 7d, 79
29. Amira Pradsnya Paramita (7A/02),78
30. Iskandar agung,7a, 77
31. Bintang Ramadhan,7A/03, 77
32. Ikbal Rozak,Kelas : 7C,No absen : 20,80
33. Rika Yanti (7G), 75

34.ARTIE R.A,4/7B, 83
35. Elmania Nur Azizah,7B / 13, 73
36. Sesilia/30/7b, 75
37. nuraeni yasmin,class: 7b/25,79
38. Sonia khoerunnisa, 7C,www.soniakhoerunnisa.blogspot.com,80
39. ASTRI WIDYA CAESARTI ,7B/5,80
40. Firza Aulia Intan B (13),Kelas : 7-G,80
41. Aghnie Rizqi Noor Syifa Fauzia,7-G,01,73
42. NAME : CEPTANIA NEO PRADHANI,CLASS : 7 HA.. ,NO : 08,70
43. VIVI ADINDA L,31/7B,70
44. Carin Luvi Septiani,Class: 7B,No : 10,70
45. Sa'adatul Aliyah/30/7c,75
46. R. Alvin Taufik F. G.,Class : 7C / 29,77
47. FANNY DWI PUTRI,7B/15, 72
48. Ghesani Kamalia R,class: 7-Haa...,number: 34,70
49. Ari Setya Pratiwi,Class:7H,Absen:06,70
50. sri nur asyiati ,Class:7haaaaa ,absent:32, 70
51. Adhyatma T.A.,7F,Absen 01, 74
52. Hendrick Tharnando,7F,No.Absen 16,73
53. Ibrahim Y.S,7F ,absen 17,70
54. Kurniawan S.,7F,Absen 18,70
55. Faris Muwaffaq akmal,7E,12, 70
56. Muhammad Yudha Fikri,27,7d(Dhe),75
57. Natasha Indah Rahmani (yg paling mut'z),7-G,27,80
58. Dzaka Abrilian M,7D-13, 83