CRESCO - Students taking Steve Anderson’s physics course are spending less time in the classroom and more time visiting area businesses this year where they are seeing science in action.
    “By going out into the community, they get to find out who is using physics,” Anderson said. “It makes them see that people actually use this stuff.”
    Crestwood high school students in both sections of Anderson’s science course are learning that physics exists outside of textbooks and classroom lectures, and that the principles of physics are at work in everything from manufacturing medical products to the treads on a car’s tires.
    Anderson, who is the science department head for the Howard-Winneshiek School District and has been a science teacher at Crestwood High School for 19 years, implemented the new hands-on, activity-based physics curriculum, “Physics That Works,” this fall.
    The yearlong course teaches students physics principles, such as velocity, acceleration, electricity, energy and magnetism, by showing how they are at work in the “real” world. Last fall, eleventh and twelfth graders in the class spoke with an engineering manager at Donaldson Company, Inc. as part of their kinematics unit, and visited Hanson Tire Company during a unit on forces and motion.
    “You start with something they understand. Then you ask them ‘why [does it work that way]?’” Anderson said.
    Instead of memorizing data from a textbook, students had the chance to talk about basic physics tenets such as friction, acceleration and centrifugal force with the owner of the local tire business, seeing firsthand how the principles apply to vehicle tires.
    In addition to speaking with businesses in the community, Anderson assigns group hands-on projects during each unit. So far, the high school students have learned about velocity and speed by creating their own motion toys. Student groups also worked together to engineer and conduct performance tests for vehicle tire treads, utilizing wagons as a test vehicle.
    The group activities teach team work, similar to that which is required of most employees in the work world.
    “It’s meant to be like if you were in an engineering firm,” Anderson said.
    Next semester, the vice president of operations at Regional Health Services of Howard County will talk to students during their unit on electricity and simple circuits. During this unit, students will be given an assignment to design and test an electric circuit similar to the one that controls a portable heart defibrillator.
    The class also plans to make a trip to H&S Motors during their generators and diodes unit, and a trip back to Donaldson, Company, Inc., as well as a visit with the local radio station as part of their unit on energy.
    Witnessing physics functioning firsthand in the work world will help students retain information longer, Anderson said.
    “I’m confident that there are students in class this year doing better than they would normally,” he said. “I know that the students enjoy coming to class every day.”
    After successfully switching to a hands-on chemistry curriculum three years ago, Anderson was motivated to make similar changes in other science classes.
    “I really thought that especially with physics, but probably with all the sciences, we were kind of too heavy into theory and not ‘what is this used for?’” Anderson said.
    One of the goals laid down by the science department is to move toward more hands-on, activity-based courses in all k-12 science classes. In order to make the change, Anderson said he has had to step out of his preferred learning style, which is through lecturing, note-taking and memorization of facts.
    “I realized that not everyone learns that way,” he said.