Bridges, Bicycles, and Traffic - Thematic Physical Science Lessons

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As stated so well by the Physics Curriculum Development Project of the Netherlands (PLON), physical science lessons should aim to stimulate students to be actively involved in the study of science. One way PLON units did that was to develop thematic science units on Bridges, Traffic and Safety (which includes bicycles), and Traffic (which includes collisions) for use with students from age 12 to 18 years. During the early 1980s, the staff of this project collaborated on three different interactive videodisc (IV) activities to develop discs for college physics courses. These disc projects were The Puzzle of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse, Energy Transformations Featuring the Bicycle, and Physics and Automobile Collisions. For the past eight years, the Department of Physics Education of the University of Amsterdam has been developing a Scientific and Technological Open Learning Environment (STOLE) that brings micro- computer based laboratory (MBL) equipment and lessons into the high school physics classrooms of the Netherlands. This project will form a bi-national steering committee to create unified thematic physical science that can be used by high school students in both the United States of America and the Netherlands. The basic physical science concepts from the printed PLON units will be brought together with the interactive videodisc (IV) lessons supported by MBL activities using the STOLE computer interfaces and apparatus. The resulting thematic physical science lessons will include the best features of these three innovative aspects of contemporary science curricular materials: interesting and relevant applications, interactive video lessons, and micro-computer based laboratory activities.