2023 – A Year of Looking Back

Looking back on 2023, there is a lot of looking many years back.

For the first time since the Covid outbreak, we visited Läckö castle for an opera performance, this year of Verdi’s Macbeth. Staying in the Naturum, we appreciated the looking back to many years of Rörstrand patterns. We also participated in Music Weeks in Sweden in Svalöv, reconnecting many friends, singing Durufle’s requiem and much more in the closing concert in Lund cathedral.

Being part of the grading group for the physics competition in January, I noted how most students omitted drawings, in spite of instructions. This reminded me of one of the first PER theses I read, by Charles Henderson, and inspired a paper on student understanding of friction for a car speeding up.

The year has also involved a few occasions of playground physics with preschool teachers – as well as the publication of a paper about how playground swings can be used for physics teaching – way beyond preschool. The paper opened with an authentic student dialogue, dating back to 2005.

When the YouTube channel Theme Park Science visited Liseberg to study the heating of the Helix magnetic brakes, it brought back memories of a 2012 paper — and experiences of today’s much easier access to IR movies. The collaboration also resulted in a very nerdy return to Chain Flyer physics, with one manuscript submitted and an even nerdier paper in the pipe. (There is more to learn than was included in the 2015 paper.)

The Oppenheimer movie brought back memories of a student project (although in the move, I did miss Fermi’s description of the first blast: “Since, at the time, there was no wind I could observe very distinctly and actually measure the displacement of the pieces of paper that were in the process of falling while the blast was passing. The shift was about 2 1/2 meters, which, at the time, I estimated to correspond to the blast that would be produced by ten thousand tons of T.N.T.”).

As preparation for the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology 2025, celebrating 100 years of quantum mechanics, I am now also revisiting another student project, with Alice in Quantumland, which was presented at Physics on Stage 2003. I am also remembering the International Year of Physics in 2005, and the opening at UNESCO of the International Year of Light 2015.

My publication year 2023 started with a paper trying out ChatGPT, submitted in December 2022, asking the Chatbot about acceleration in the highest point when a teddy bear (or rabbit) is thrown into the air. We knew we had to be quick, in view of the very fast development – the paper has already been well cited, and more citations expected.

Looking forward to creative collaborations in 2024 – with and without rabbits.

Round and round in circles

Another year comes to an end. Another year of making the most of local possibilities, including early morning cycling to a nearby lake for a pre-breakfast swim around the summer solstice and skiing and skating around the winter solstice, and whenever possible scheduling outdoor family meetings. Vaccinations in June-July created a window of more normal life, including visits to Liseberg and the department in Lund, as well as two edutainment days at Gröna Lund in September (including a few rides in Monster), and seeing both the sons who now live in Stockholm. After a booster in December we could also have a family Christmas. One little fir tree from the garden was selected for a Christmas tree this year.

The book manuscript submitted in April was finally published in November. The chapter on circular motion that was originally planned ended up being split into two. Since circular motion in a vertical plane can involve many different types of rotation, a preceding chapter on rotation was needed. However, the circular motion in next year’s new attraction Tempus at Liseberg (a Nebulaz from Zamperla) is essentially rotation-free – and perfect for making student assignments: What forces from the ride act on your body during the different parts of the motion?

The work on amusement park physics also seems to go in circles, coming back to studies of students’ inconsistent strategies in problems involving circular motion, now using some multiple-choice questions based on open-ended questions I used some 15 years ago. It is really fascinating to discover how only very few students manage consistency over uniform and non-uniform circular motion and in vertical and horizontal planes, and how rarely they make use of the experiences of their own bodies.

Looking forward to circular motion work in 2022

2020 – A year without roller coasters

Old railway bridge in Jonsered

I think that 1986 may have been the last year before 2020 that I didn’t go on a single roller coaster or other amusement ride. Our older children had yet to discover the joys of carousels, veteran cars and children’s boats.

For 25 years, since 1995, I have used amusement parks as part of physics teaching, for my own students in physics and engineering programmes, as a guest teacher in math and technology teacher education, for teacher professional development events and also for many years as coorganizer of Edutainment days at Gröna Lund and physics days at Liseberg. Not this year.

Still, we are, of course, privileged to have a large house, with a large garden and plenty of nice walks and bike excursions at the doorstep. Working from home is mostly OK.

Waterbombing the sea and flowerspraying the forest fire

The Swedish response to Covid-19 has been very erratic. Amusement parks had to stay closed, with reference to a law of public order (from 1993!), while crowds of people have been allowed in shopping centres and in public transport, as described in the blog post from July. 

All over Europe – except Sweden – the amusement parks opened, using the joint detailed plans for safe opening. Sweden, in general, has taken very different approaches to the rest of Europe. The Swedish policy feels like waterbombing the sea while using a flower spray on a forest fire.

The blog post from July, outlining my view of the situation is a translation of one of many versions of an opinion piece that faced rejection from several newspapers (following three accepted pieces, though). So, this year, I have faced more rejections than all previous rejections from earlier years. On the other hand, I have got several physics education papers published.

Theoretical roller coaster rides and other 2020 texts

Without the distraction of real amusement park visits, it has been quite a productive writing year, starting with a paper I never thought I would write – on Newton’s first law and smartphones in amusement parks, which spawned out of a book manuscript (that was also rejected by two publishers, but finally landed successfully with the AAPT/AIP, due in June 2021 – thanks Rebecca Vieyra for suggesting them). 

Virtual amusement rides don’t give you the experience of weightlessness or many g’s, but they can remind you of the experience and also provide overlays of theoretical forces. This work, in collaboration with Malcolm Burt, is part of a second paper spawned from the book writing, about different ways of representing acceleration in one-dimensional motion.

During a year with fewer distractions, I have also dug into old notes, and finally written up papers about balls rolling down a playground slide (spawned from the playground chapter of the book) which has been in the pipeline since 2015. A paper about Archimedes principle together with two high-school teachers, following a facebook teacher discussion, only had to wait three year to be written. The really old notes were from constructing the competition problems for the EUSO 2010 in Gothenburg, expected in the March 2021 issue of Physics Education.

The “best-seller” about jerk, which has now been downloaded nearly 1/8 million times, was followed by two papers this year, one about jerk and snap in roller coasters, together with David Eager, and one literature review about Jerk within the context of science and engineering, including also Hasti Hayati (who did most of the hard work) and Hans Alberg (who always manages to find relevant historical references, even if they are not always easily available).

I was also invited to coauthor a paper about Physics Toolbox Sensor Suite Play (do try it, if you haven’t already – it is great for demonstrations, and to introduce teachers and friends to the sensors in the phone).

Zoom, zoom, zoom

Four licentiate students had their final seminars during the year. Simon Holmström defended his work during what would be my last meeting with colleagues in Lund. All the others have been via zoom – and of course, it is wonderful that telepresence can work as well as it does.

A couple of teacher professional development activities also happened over zoom – with the the advantage of enabling teachers from different parts of the country to meet.

Looking forward to 2021

Like all teachers, I am really looking forward to some IRL interactions during 2021. Of course I also look forward to experiencing the new dark ride Wonderland at Liseberg – and to riding roller coasters again.

Please, politicians – sort out a sensible pandemic law, where closures depend on reality and not on what is covered by a law from 1993! Stop waterbombing the sea!

Helix, Valkyria, Balder, Lisebergbanan – and the Monster at Gröna Lund. I don’t want to wait any longer!