Polarized Light: Silly Activities and Serious Physics

"In this workshop, you will get a chance to explore the wonderful world of polarized light with a guided inquiry using cheap materials. You will explore polarizing filters, bi-refringence, circular polarization and more. You will learn how you can help your students understand the vector nature of polarization through dance. The climax of the session will be using John Travolta’s most famous dance move to explain how the new 3-D glasses work. Note: This session will be about the classical explanation of polarization. The word ‘photon’ will not be used – not even once."

Roberta has been teaching physics in Toronto for 25 years. She is rather fanatical about modern physics and Physics Education Research and spends her spare time looking for ways to combine them to make high school physics more exciting and inviting. She has given workshops to this end around special relativity, general relativity, particle physics quantum uncertainty and entanglement. She is a consultant for the Perimeter Institute of Theoretical and the coordinator of PI’s Teacher Network. In her spare spare time she plays New Orleans jazz at Grossman’s Tavern in Toronto.