On December 18th, 2009, ARTStem participants Ashley Witherspoon (Science, RJ Reynolds High School) and Jason Romney (UNCSA, Design & Production) spearheaded a teaching collaboration that ended up reaching approximately 140 Reynolds students in six different classes (physics, physical science, tech theater). Here are their reflections on the collaboration, along w/ some pictures and video!
Ashley Witherspoon teaches Earth and Environmental science, and Physical Science, at RJ Reynolds High School. She is an ARTStem participant.
" . . . At our last [ARTStem] meeting Jason was talking about some of the things that he was doing with his students . . . and hearing about what he was teaching his students made me realize how he could really relate to my upcoming "wave" topic in Physical Science. . . .Physical science doesn't get a great deal of guest speakers, so to be working on a collaboration with someone who really works in the arts field with so much physical science tied into it was just an extraordinary find. . . . Jason did an excellent job giving the students a more practical example of how waves are related to something they love—MUSIC! They really found his presentation interesting, and I thought it was great how he had them up moving about the room finding quiet spots due to "wave cancellation" . . . And they really were hooked at the end when he played the hottest new song, "Fireflies," by Owl City. He played the song and let the students tell him when they were hearing sound changes due to phase changes in waves. This made the students realize that waves are not just something "boring" that I talk about in my class, but something that they listen to and are used by their favorite artists to get different sounds and cool effects in their songs! I especially loved how Jason talked about the problems or creative effects that different arenas have for stage designers and musicians and how they have to take all their surroundings into account when they are planning a performance."
Jason Romney is a faculty member in the School of Design and Production at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and an ARTStem participant.
" . . . Ashley invited me to come as a guest lecturer to four physical science and one physics class. They had been learning about the basic science of waves (Ashley can explain that part better than I can) and Ashley asked if I could come and show them some practical application for what they had learned. I gave a presentation on sound wave interaction. There were several demonstrations that allowed them to both see and hear sound waves interacting destructively as a result of phase differences. We heard what it sounds like when the waves combine out of phase electronically and then how it sounds when they combine out of phase acoustically in the air. Once they were familiar with how this interaction sounded, the conversation shifted to how we might assign a value to this information. The science can demonstrate and prove that the sound waves are interacting destructively or constructively but the science doesn't tell you whether that is good or bad. I explained that it is an artist who decides whether this is good or bad, right or wrong, a problem or a solution. For example, if we were doing a live performance of a play and the actor's voice was interacting with it's own reflection destructively, it might make it difficult for the audience to understand the words. In that case, we would decide that we have a problem that we should try and solve. If we're producing a music track, we might decide that this problem is an appropriate artistic effect. I then played an example of a popular song where the artist is purposely causing destructive interactions with the sound of his voice. The concept of wave interaction is used as an artistic effect in most popular music today. Depending on the style of the effect it might be called "flange", "filtering", "chorus", "phasing", etc. But all these involve manipulating the way the sound waves interact constructively or destructively to create the sound the artist is looking for. Overall, the students seemed to really enjoy the presentation. They were very engaged and asked good questions. They really seemed to like the part at the end when we started talking about applying meaning to the science. They were all heading out to fire up their iPods and listen to all their music to identify these effects. Some were particularly interested when I told them how many of my students get fun and interesting jobs using this information. . . . Personally, I really enjoyed it. It's fun to see high school students get excited about learning this stuff!"
Still interested? Here's some video from Jason's presentation.
