Over the past several years, we have contributed several articles to TPT that focused on a forensics-style reexamination of historical events. In each article, we presented a case study as a pedagogy for teaching topics from introductory-level physics courses. Recently, we assembled our prior work into a series of “MythBusters”-style modules for pre-service teachers (PSTs). The goal of these modules is to widen the pedagogical viewpoint of the PSTs by exposing them to case studies as a means of teaching physics, problem solving, and critical thinking. In this article, we describe the design and rationale of our modules while providing anecdotal commentary from a cohort of PSTs who trial tested them. We identify several unique teaching opportunities that we share with readers of TPT.
This January marked the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire. On Jan. 27, 1967, the interior of NASA’s AS-204 command module (CM), occupied by American astronauts Roger Chaffee, Virgil “Gus” Grissom, and Ed White, caught fire during a rehearsal of its scheduled Feb. 21 launch (Fig. 1). By the time the ground crew was able to open the hatch, the three astronauts had perished. On April 24, 1967, NASA announced that the flight would be officially re-designated “Apollo 1.” In this case study, we conduct a basic horizontal flame test, patterned after the protocols set forth by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to measure the ignitability of solids. The laboratory activity is a complementary exercise to the vertical flame test described in our previous article that examined the initial source of fuel for the fire that destroyed the massive German zeppelin Hindenburg in 1937. Combining techniques from both case studies gives students a quantitative understanding of how the flammability of materials is tested and how a forensics approach to physics can be used to understand significant historical events.
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