Loved the quantum simulations! 30 years too late for me, alas. 😀

No… we will catch up next time! I did meet Helen, another PGP regular. Hope you had a great time in Anaheim!

Motion sensor plushie

I won a gift certificate at the Vernier booth. I didn’t win what my heart desires - a motion sensor plushie. #iTeachPhysics

First in-park experience of an ABS challenge. Pitch overturned from ball 4 to strike 3. Crowd cheered! No delay, no argument. Loved it.

Angel stadium

Take me to church.

Angel stadium

Take me to church.

Hanging out with @fpoodry.bsky.social at NSTA. 😀 I only use two hashtags on here, and Fran is familiar both with #iTeachPhysics and #BAONPDX

Costumes of perry and heinz

O there you are Perry

Puppy park at NSTA!

At NSTA Anaheim! Other than the coffee station, what’s caught my eye so far:

And Earth may well be destroyed any moment. Douglas Adams had it right! 😀

I get it! One heart-shaped button has to do a lot of work. Hee hee. 😀

Attended the planetarium show at the Smithsonian air and space museum about interstellar space flight. Awful. Non-evidence-based speculation. All-AI animation poorly done. Embarrassing, as now I’ll have to explain to the 90 9th graders why the movie was wrong and science is real. 😡 #iTeachPhysics

So sorry, Jason. May his memory be a blessing.

The 7th annual Conceptual Physics Summer Institute will be July 31-Aug 1! This is professional development for the sub-AP level. Come join me and 40 colleagues for lab ideas, classroom-ready materials, and fantastic shop talk! $200 per person. #iTeachPhysics

jacobsphysics.org/2026/04/08/2...

“Well, you don’t have to do your job in traffic and so loudly, I told her. She put up a hand, and said “stop harassing me, I feel threatened.” Ok, I see her point, she was a smaller woman, I a large!(r) man, so I walked well away. But wait a sec! Lady, YOU harassed ME! Go TF away! 😡

Everyone stressed, trying to catch flights or deal mentally with the throng of personflesh moving at cross purposes… and this lady interrupted traffic and trod on my every nerve. I told her I don’t appreciate the aggressive sales pitch. “Just doing my job,” she said. 2/

My only beef with ATL was the time I was accosted by a credit card huckster. She came out of her booth, stood in front of me on the concourse, and loudly started in on the benefits of her card and why I mist sign up NOW! 1/

I prefer to think of it as a temporary tattoo in the shape of the Virgin Mary.

Go back to black and red, get rid of the Am*zon spy tech sponsor, and I’d buy a Moultrie Thorns shirt right now! #BAONPDX

The 7th annual Conceptual Physics Summer Institute will be July 31-Aug 1! This is professional development for the sub-AP level. Come join me and 40 colleagues for lab ideas, classroom-ready materials, and fantastic shop talk! $200 per person. #iTeachPhysics

jacobsphysics.org/2026/04/08/2...

My thoughts exactly, support your team, still so much to play for #GoonerFamily #AFC #Arsenal #COYG

The strange thing is that we already know this. We have always known this. Every physics textbook ever written comes with exercises at the end of each chapter, and every physics professor who has ever stood in front of a lecture hall has said the same thing: you cannot learn physics by watching someone else do it. You have to pick up the pencil. You have to attempt the problem. You have to get it wrong, sit with the wrongness, and figure out where your reasoning broke. Reading the solution manual and nodding along feels like understanding. It is not understanding. Every student who has tried to coast through a problem set by reading the solutions and then bombed the exam knows this in their bones. We have centuries of accumulated pedagogical wisdom telling us that the attempt, including the failed attempt, is where the learning lives. And yet, somehow, when it comes to Al agents, we've collectively decided that maybe this time it's different. That maybe nodding at Claude's output is a substitute for doing the calculation yourself. It isn't. We knew that before LLMs existed. We seem to have forgotten it the moment they became convenient. Centuries of pedagogy, defeated by a chat window.

As a physics teacher, this is the part of student AI use that worries me. (Not all of us have decided that things are different this time.) 🎢 🍎 Ref: ergosphere.blog/posts/the-ma...

This is a place for you, @petercashwell.bsky.social and @spuffyduds.bsky.social

4. We went to a bakey (not a typo! That’s why we went!) for coffee and excellent bread smells.

3. We discovered a bookstore a block from here where they had inexpensive ancient and unusual books. On behalf of my potter wife, I’m tempted to offer $1000 for the entire shelves of ceramics books.

2. This is the third most money I’ve ever paid for a ticket to any event. After opening day at Kansas City’s women’s soccer stadium and Hamilton. I hear it’s worth it! But 15yo me is saying, put that money in the bank and listen to the soundtrack on compact disk. 🤷‍♂️

1. I thought that was a great name for an opera house a block from
Boston Common. Yes! For the citizens of the Revolution!

Then I found out it’s sponsored by Citizens Bank. Sort of like the Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati. 🤷‍♂️

Citizens opera house from our seats

About to see The Outsiders musical at Citizens Pera House in Boston. A few thoughts: