Brian Monson

Surely, Canvas's owners are not going to let their API be misused like this? It seems like a student who subscribed to this could be kicked out of Canvas for TOS violations.

I asked the admissions office. They’re doing random audits of applications - rec letters, extracurriculars, awards due to an “increased risk for application fraud.” Like you I assumed AI was a motivation.

I've been a HS teacher for 26 years. Today was the first time an admissions office contacted me to confirm I had written a rec letter. Are kids forging letters now?

I guess I am officially old now. I gave in and let my Dr talk me into the pneumococcus vaccine today.

The first science fair director hurdle is jumped. All the expected kids have registered. I can plan the hall layout and begin the wholesale slaughter of trees that goes with running a science fair.

A picture of a digital clock showing a very low relative humidity.

Relative humidity is 18% so it’s a good day to start electrostatics #ITeachPhysics

AI detectors frequently flag my writing. I wonder if it's because I'm a terrible typist and autocorrect covers up many of my mistakes. My prose style is spare and not flowery and pretentious like most AI apps, so it has to be something different.

Today I made my first ever post here where I mentioned the school where I work. The micromanaging admin who used to spy on our social media is gone! I edited my profile too.

A student from ASMSA, Luis Vidal, was named a Scholar in the #RegeneronSTS just now. We're proud of his accomplishment and with him good luck on making it to a finalist in a few weeks. I'm also happy to see @society4science.bsky.social has joined BlueSky

I didn’t tell you about the plane crash two years ago, but it was out of sight of my house.

Finally, yesterday, a young man crashes his Christmas present Harley into a nandina bush on his first drive out of the parking lot. The man was uninjured. Sadly, so was the nandina.

It’s been a wild semester in my quiet little neighborhood. First, a microburst drops a big chunk of gum tree on our house. Next, a drunk girl flips her jeep into my neighbor’s yard. Then, cops chase a meth dealer around town until he crashes into another neighbors house.

Is there not an unbalanced gravitational torque on the clay part of the system?

One of the last things we do in my Physics 1 class is this challenge. They have to find the ratio of distances so the ring and disk hit the end of the track at the same time. This crew did a good job. #ITeachPhysics

Going to head out of town tonight and get away from light pollution

Things left in my room after the exam today: A sweater, one foam headphone ear cup, & a bracelet. But mostly a lot of eraser crumbs #ITeachPhysics 🎢

Does the periodicity of the variation match the rotation period? I used to do the lab this way and the periodic impulse the students applied to keep the weight rotating showed up this way. Highlighting the good part and calculating the mean might reduce the effect of this.

I tried adjusting the black nut after seeing your reply. It seems to be glued in place.

I have enough OEM hooks for now. I'll save the long ones and try to adjust them if my supply continues to dwindle.

Students have misplaced hooks and i replaced them with some older ones with a longer threaded hook and the probe quit working. Go back to the short one and it’s fine.

A photo of two threaded hooks. One has a longer threaded length

Cool fact. Pasco wireless force probes and carts only work with the hooks they came with. A longer threaded hook interferes w/the flex of the strain gauge and prevents them from being calibrated. The one on the right is correct #ITeachPhysics

A digital poster in the style of a World War II propaganda piece. Isolaed on a yellow background, a normal, squarish, 20-something guy with glasses is sitting working on a laptop. A ghostly figure of Hitler has his arm around the guy and is grinning and shaking a fist triumphantly looking at the laptop screen. On the lid of the laptop where an apple might otherwise be is an openAI logo, bright green, and dripping green ooze down the lid. Text on the poster, in combinations of sans-serif type and brush script reads: Using Generative AI? You’re prompting with Hitler! GenAI is a Fascist Project! Try using your brain instead Don’t surrender your creativity to the tech billionaire’s control

New awareness campaign

It's hidden behind a button labeled "Compose" in the "Upload Recommendation Letter" section.

I always mentioned OpenStax when I was an AP physics consultant. They've customized it for Physics 1 & 2 too. Maybe it's lack of marketing or worries about crappy bandwidth in the kids' homes?

BTW, I was wrong. There is a HS physics book from OpenStax now.

OpenStax only has college-level physics texts. Is there an open-source, on-level physics text out there? Printed texts are now prohibitively expensive for many schools.

i tried to update my AAPT profile by sneaking my Bluesky profile into the field for X but it rejected it. Bummer

It's used in flow meters and borehole monitoring in the petroleum industry and Indonesia has some of that.

Is Indonesia downwind from the islands where the French tested their nukes?

Great, Turnitin thinks using \imath and \jmath is "an attempt to hinder similarity detection." Every kid who did unit vectors correctly got a flag. Everyone who made them with regular i and j didn't. Opening the inbox and seeing all the flags was disconcerting 🎢 #ITeachPhysics

Thanks for the idea Bree! My classes are doing this on Thursday

This is exactly why I asked to join the class after they stole all my papers to train their plagiarism machine.

I still have a glass urine specimen flask I bought from them 40 years ago. I used it to hold pencils on my desk for years.