A Project-Based Approach: Students Describe the Physics in Movies

Ben Daley
Citation: The Physics Teacher 42, 41 (2004); doi: 10.1119/1.1639969
View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1119/1.1639969
View Table of Contents: http://scitation.aip.org/content/aapt/journal/tpt/42/1?ver=pdfcov
Published by the American Association of Physics Teachers
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A Project-Based Approach:
Students Describe the
Physics in Movies
Ben Daley,

High Tech High, San Diego, CA

If we wish to design an authentic test,

we must first decide what are the actual
performances we want students to be
good at.1

ed Sizer, founder of the Coalition of Essential Schools, calls for teachers designing a
curriculum to begin with the end in mind;
that is, determine your goals and only then design appropriate assignments and assessments that guide students toward these goals. Sizer argues that students
should be tested via public exhibitions that drive the
curriculum and set clear standards for students about
what is expected of them.2 This paper describes an exhibition in which students analyze the physics of
movies.
While traditional pencil-and-paper tests have their
place, exhibitions demand more of students by asking
them to produce meaningful work. As Grant Wiggins
has noted, a true test of intellectual ability requires
the performance of exemplary tasks.1 Players led by
coaches preparing for the next game and actors led by
directors preparing for the play demonstrate the focus
and persistence that can be expected of adolescents
when the goal is well defined. With clearly articulated
expectations in the classroom, we can anticipate the
same sense of purpose from our students.
Upon reflection, the question of what I want students to be able to do at the end of my course is not so
easy to answer. At first, it seemed that my goals for
students were a list of things that I would cover. KineTHE PHYSICS TEACHER Vol. 42, January 2004

matics, dynamics, conservation laws, electricity, and

modern physics form part of a series of topics that I
would present to the students. What the students
would do with this knowledge was less clear. Is the
answer simply, Do well on the AP test? Do I want
students to know a list of equations? Should they be
able to plug the correct numbers into the correct formulas and then use algebra and their calculators to
produce the right answer?
What should students be able to do?
I want students to have the ability to solve penciland-paper physics problems, but there is more. I want
students to get interested in and excited by the physics
in the world around them. I want students to notice
physics in their everyday life and to recognize incorrect physics when they see it. I want students not only
to understand why they see a rainbow, but also to be
able to explain their understanding to others. I want
students to be able to study a complex, real-world situation, to look for ways to apply physics models to the
situation (using appropriate simplifications), and to
use the tools of physics to analyze what is happening.
Then I want them to be able to explain their analysis
to others. With this in mind, I designed an authentic
test, structured in the form of an exhibition.

The Exhibition
Choose a three- to five-minute clip from a movie
or cartoon. Look for examples of correct physics or
scenes where the laws of physics are violated.
Make measurements and use physics equations to
demonstrate why the scenes in the segment are or
are not physically possible. Prepare a 15-minute

DOI: 10.1119/1.1639969

41

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presentation of your findings for our class. In addition to critique and feedback from your classmates
and teacher, your presentation will be videotaped
so that you can watch your presentation yourself.
After appropriate modifications, you will make
your presentation again, but this time after school
to a larger audience, which the wider school community will be invited to attend. A panel of students, faculty members, and scientists from the
community will attend to critique your presentation.

The School Site

My students worked on these exhibitions during
the two years that I taught AP Physics at a suburban
independent school for girls. The first year, five students took AP Physics B and completed the exhibition once we had studied mechanics during the first
quarter. The second year, six students took AP Physics
C and completed the exhibition after we had studied
mechanics during the first semester. I scheduled these
presentations after school and invited the entire
school community to attend. Family, friends, interested students, teachers, and administrators were often in
attendance.

Results
One thing I noticed about these exhibitions was
the level of excitement around the school about
physics. A number of freshmen and sophomores approached me to ask physics questions related to the
exhibitions. One math teacher commented that she
would like to sign up to take physics the next year.
Rather than cold and lifeless, some students began to
see physics as interesting and relevant to the real
world. In fact, some students signed up for AP
Physics the second year primarily because of their experience attending the exhibitions.

Observations
I have learned from these exhibitions that it is important to help students develop an interesting presentation and to teach the audience how to participate. One justification for students presentations is
to avoid the talking-head syndrome for the teacher.
However, student presentations often substitute one
talking head for another. For this reason, I encourage

42

students to find ways to engage the audience. I encourage them to use visuals to demonstrate concepts
and suggest that they think about what questions they
might want to ask of the audience to draw them into
the presentation. It is equally important to give the
audience a means to participate in the exhibition. I
have found that telling students to pay attention to
what really strikes them about the presentation and
giving them an opportunity to share their thoughts
with the presenter greatly enhances the experience for
everyone. Presenters get immediate feedback on how
effectively they conveyed their explanations, and students in the audience think about what constitutes a
successful presentation.
One of the more difficult aspects of these exhibitions for me as a teacher is resisting my desire to jump
in and help the presenter when things start to go badly. I know that for the students to feel ownership of
the presentation, it is crucial that the presentation be
theirs from start to finish. For this reason, I make
them responsible for every aspect of the presentation,
including advertising the event and setting up the
room. Even so, my stomach sometimes clenches as I
hear the misconceptions my presenters still tightly
cling to despite my best efforts. However, I know that
these exhibitions, warts and all, demonstrate both
what my students know and do not yet know. Their
mistakes provide a focal point for subsequent class discussions.

Student Projects
Students chose to present a wide range of physics
concepts through their movie clips. One student explained why you would not hear an X-wing fighter in
space explode. One student calculated the height of a
cliff considering how long it took Pee Wee Hermans
car to hit the bottom (four miles!). One particularly
dynamic presentation included an explanation of
Goofy in a mirror fun house. The presenter demonstrated large convex and concave mirrors to the audience and passed out small curved mirrors. Another
student described the many errors in the application
of special relativity in Contact. We physics teachers often tell students that physics is everywhere. After
listening to their classmates presentations, students
really believe it.

THE PHYSICS TEACHER Vol. 42, January 2004

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Accountability
Accountability seems to be a current buzzword
among policy makers. This exhibition provides an opportunity for students to be held accountable to their
community, yet in a manner more authentic than a
high-stakes standardized test. Students demonstrate
their knowledge to the school community and are assessed not only by their teacher, but also by other
teachers, students, and local scientists and engineers.
The reason for the public nature of the exhibition is
best described by Adria Steinberg, who points out that
it is in the very public-ness the sharing of ideas
and attempts with others who take the work seriously
that a true quality standard evolves.3 In other
words, the act of making the work public raises the expectations of all concerned. When students are held
accountable to outside experts in the field, they hold
themselves to a higher standard and consequently produce higher quality work.

noticed, in my four years at **, that its easy to sit

down and memorize Newtons laws and miss the
entire point of them. It was challenging to have us
analyze things that happen (or not) in everyday life.
Student C

I have always remembered that video presentation

fondly. I tutored physics for the last three semesters
at ** University (I never would have guessed), and I
remember telling a number of my tutees about it.
Working on the project was the most enjoyable
homework I ever had. It provided the opportunity to apply physics to something that I enjoyed
doing. They were also quite fun to watch as well. I
remember the presentation of the project was quite
daunting, and that would have been my only complaint at the time. It was scary for me to ask a faculty member to attend, but in retrospect we were
really lucky to have that type of relationship with
the faculty to ask them to attend (I say this now
after too many 300-student lectures).

Student Reflections

Next Steps

In order to include students perspectives on the exhibitions, I contacted my former students (at the time
of my contact, they were juniors and seniors at universities in the United States and Canada). I found email
addresses for 10 of the 11 students; six responded. In
their responses, students touched upon the difficulty
of presenting in front of an audience and the greater
level of understanding needed to explain physics to
someone else, as compared to the level of understanding needed to take a test. Because I believe it is important to include students voices in the conversation
about school reform, I have included typical excerpts
from their replies.

Part of the work we are doing at High Tech High is

learning how to do project-based, exhibition-driven
work with students who have a wide range of prior
academic experiences. Based on my experience, I believe that projects like this one can appropriately challenge every student in the class. I have found that
when my teaching is more traditional, I ask myself,
How can I possibly teach such a wide range of students in the same classroom? When my students are
engaged in a project, the problem seems to go away as
I attempt to help each student improve, wherever he
or she is. One of my next steps is to create more projects such as this in order to develop an entirely exhibition-driven curriculum. I would like to rethink my
physics curriculum so that everything we do ultimately prepares students for the exhibition rather than using the exhibition as an add-on at the end of the semester. This raises questions about what physics content must be covered, particularly in this era of highstakes testing. It is my belief that by engaging students in such projects, not as much content can be
covered compared to the chalk-and-talk method of instruction, but the additional skills students develop
during these types of projects makes the time spent
well worth it. Examples of student work can be found
at http://www.hightechhigh.org.

Student A

You really had to be sure you understood what was

going on for every little detail because you had to
clearly explain it to non-physics people. You
couldnt just float by part of the problem or memorize it and assume you knew why you were doing
something or guess at it. In that respect the presentations may have made me learn the material better
because I had to pay attention to every detail.
Student B

I thought the projects were a useful application of

the theories wed spent the year learning in class. Id

THE PHYSICS TEACHER Vol. 42, January 2004

43

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to Jon Marr at Union College, Julie

Bianchini at U.C. Santa Barbara, Dom Pendino at
Lower Merion High School, and Rob Riordan at
High Tech High for their editing of this article.
Special thanks to Doug Biedenweg at the Chadwick
School for the original physics of movies idea.
References
1. G. Wiggins, A true test: toward more authentic and
equitable assessment, Phi Delta Kappan 70, 705
(1989).

44

2.

T.R. Sizer, Horaces School: Redesigning the American

High School (Houghton Mifflin, New York, 1992), p.
22.
3. Ref. 1, p. 703.
PACS codes: 01.40D, 01.40Ea, 01.40Eb, 01.40Gb
Ben Daley, native of the Granite State and graduate of
Haverford College and U.C. Santa Barbara, is trying the
physics of movies project this semester with his class of
31 seniors at High Tech High, an ethnically diverse, public
charter high school.
Associate Principal of Academic Affairs, High Tech
High, 2861 Womble Road, San Diego, CA 92106;
bdaley@hightechhigh.org

THE PHYSICS TEACHER Vol. 42, January 2004

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