Feb 08 2009
remembering ticker tape analysis
I’ve been looking at the entries for Dan Meyer’s 2008 design competition and I’m really taken with the 2nd of his personal picks from the entries. The design was submitted by Sam Shah and the physicist in me just loves the unaligned tabs below the bar chart. They remind me of the ticker timers and ticker tape analysis we used to have in school physics before the arrival of dataloggers and light gates for speed & acceleration measurements.
Sticking little strips of narrow paper on to sheets of coloured A4 allowed us to build up a Blue Peter version of events and undoubtedly contributed more to understanding of speed-time graphs than inspection of the “here’s one I prepared earlier” datalogger graphs we use in school today.
