NERD ALERT!!!!

2 Feb

I recently went to the NYC transit museum and it was AWESOME. I absolutely LOVED it and will be going back very soon and quite often.

The adventure started with an awesome treat. I asked the guy selling the entrance tickets if there was a student discount to which he answered “no.” I then jokingly asked if there was a teacher discount, to which he chuckled and also answered “no.” As I went to pay for my ticket he said “Just go ahead, you made me laugh so it’s on me.” I couldn’t believe it! My awful sense of humor actually worked!!! Though I must say, at $7 a ticket, it’s a steal for what an amazing place it is.

All the old pictures of the beginnings of the construction of the tunnels were incredible. It was a bit spooky to see the black and white pictures of the construction workers in dark, dirty tunnels that are now the subway stations I ride through every day. After walking through the construction section of the exhibit, I ended up at the electricity section where I proceeded to spend about an hour getting ideas of how to teach electricity and magnetism to my class.

Electricity, the invisible force that moves over eight million New Yorkers a day – including me!

Got a brief demo of a homopolar motor demonstrating the Lorentz force. The way a a basic motor works is if you have an electric current flowing through a wire that happens to be in a magnetic field, it feels a force push on it. For a homopolar motor, if you have a straight piece of wire sitting in a magnetic field, the wire will feel a force pushing on it at right angles to both the wire and the magnetic field. The force the induces a torque around the axis of rotation which is seen when the magnets and nail rotate. I plan on making one of these when I teach magnetic fields to my class. SCIENCE!

Also got to take a sweet picture inside a NYC bus. Had to wait until all the little kids were done playing around until I got my turn, but it was well worth the wait. You can just see the excitement in my face!