OK. I've narrowed my essential question to something like this:

"On any essential physics concept, what person (or persons) was (were) initially responsible for coming up with the developed idea? What were the historical and scientific circumstances that led this person or persons to develop the idea, and what were the consequences of the discovery?"

This is essentially related to my original idea of adding some sort of Physics Biographies to my classes, but it may avoid the simple copy and pass in syndrome.

During this third session of this class I spent a fair amount of time deciding what not to do for my project for this class. (Really not for this class but rather for me and my physics classes.)

At first I had the idea that I would have my students do biographies of various famous physicists which other physics teachers I know do. However, my classes are loaded with stuff to accomplish and fitting new material into my courses is difficult unless I eliminate something. Consequently, after talking with Connie, I have decided that I'm not going to have my students do some sort of traditional biography study.

Instead, I want to find a way for my students to relate what is often a single equation or concept in their physics texts to what was often a lifetime of study and experiment on the part of the person who came up with that idea.

More to come on this but that's where I am now.

First Post

This is my first post on this blog. I anticiipate that over the course of the next 98 days (the length of this course) I will have a large number of hours spent on this site.

At this point I don't know how to add stuff like pictures or charts or other graphics, but I'm sure that I'll get to that eventually.