The principals are revolting against testing in NY

[GreyGeek]

Re: The principals are revolting against testing in NY

The "final exam" for my general science class was that each student built a model rocket ....

Great minds must think alike!

Making rockets was part of a unit on the laws of motion in my 9th grade general science class! It was always a blast! (sometimes literally!). In my physics classes we analyzed the design of a rocket to learn the relationship between the diameter and drag, impulse and altitude, and how each rocket achieved maximum altitude for a specific payload. More or less would result in a lower maximum altitude.

I wrote a program for the TI SR-52 hand calculator, my first computer, because it had the ability to store programs made up of 224 steps of what was essential assembler instruction. on a magnetic strip of plastic. I wrote a program that computed the maximum altitude for a multi-stage rocket given the diameter, drag coeff, thrust and duration of the engine, weight of rocket and engine and payload, etc. It required three magnetic strips but worked very quickly. TI published it. On the last day of spring finals it grew legs and walked away.

[GreyGeek]

Re: The principals are revolting against testing in NY

.....
Remember these? Ah, I miss mine still.
...

I was raised on the other side of the tracks and couldn't afford such kits in the 1950s. In the mid-50s I used some varnished #22 copper wire, a chunk of Galena (Lead Sulfide), safety pin, some tin foil from chewing gum wrappers, a toilet roll tube, 2K ohm headphones, and a 50 ft length of fence wire as an antenna to build my crystal radio set. Radio station KLZ, which was only 2 miles northwest of my house and broadcast AM radio with 50,000 watts, used to have an evening jazz show called "The Cool Bill Show". The signal was so strong that I could lay the ear pieces on the pillow beside my ears and hear the show clearly. No battery included or required!


In the 50s and 60s the radio kits that people used to build were vacuum tube radios. Heathkit began supplying kits when I was in HS and all the way through grad school in 1968. Between 1962 and 1970, I probably built almost every electronic kit that Heathkit sold. I bought the Heathkit DX-60 shortwave transceiver and built a 15 foot cubical quad antenna which got 5X9 signal strength in Japan on 60 watts CW. I built their EC-1 analog computer and used it in my HS physic classes. I built their 25 inch console color TV, and many of their electronic tools, like their grid-dip meter used to tune LCR circuits, their metal detector, etc....

Radio Shack used to sell all sorts of parts for radios and electronic gear and it was impossible for me to walk by that store with my checkbook in hand and not go in. When Heathkit stopped selliing kits and RS stopped selling parts I resorted to James Electronics on the web for my parts, mostly to build transistor and IC circuits. Then the electronics hobby field turned to FETs and VLSIC with "Operational Amplifiers" hooked up to create all sorts of devices on breadboards ... the precursor to programmable CPUs. The last electronic device I built was a device to time the racing events at the Merrick county fair, using the beam of a flash light, photoelectric transistors, and a 555 timer IC fed into a digital counter & output. The horse would break the beam to start the timer and cross the finish line (which was also the starting line) to break the beam again. The time between those two events were measured to 1/1,000 of a second. This solved a long standing problem that arose when three or four guys with hand held stop watches would argue about which of their times should be thrown out, etc... Lots of claims of bias.