Comment on “Kick-off”

Armando Vieira

Citation: The Physics Teacher 44, 406 (2006); doi: 10.1119/1.2353570

View online: https://doi.org/10.1119/1.2353570
View Table of Contents: http://aapt.scitation.org/toc/pte/44/7
Published by the American Association of Physics Teachers
 Letters
Tweaking “Simple
Photoelectric Effect”
Demo
I was delighted to see the article
“Simple Photoelectric Effect” by
Adolf Cortel in the May issue.1 I read
the article the day before discussing
the photoelectric effect with my AP
students and assembled a variation
on the set-up described in the article
just in time for class. (Experiences
like this make TPT worth the whole
cost of my AAPT membership!)
Readers may benefit from my ex-
periences. I discovered that my very
old neon bulbs were unstable and did
not fire at repeatable voltages. A visit
to my local Radio Shack revealed that
the #272-1102 bulbs mentioned in
the article have been discontinued.
However, many inexpensive electri-
cal testers available from hardware
stores contain similar neon bulbs.
(I removed the bulb from a Com-
mercial Electric HST400 electrical
tester purchased for $1.79 at Home
Depot.)
Finally, we do not have a variac, so
I used the 0-500-V side of a PASCO
high-voltage dc power supply. How-
ever, the output is very sensitive to
small movements of the voltage-ad-
justment knob. This means that I
cannot readily obtain the high sensi-
tivity to photon frequency that was
displayed in Cortel’s article. But with
the bulb biased just short of firing at
~93-V dc, I can use a normal “party
light” incandescent bulb coated with
red plastic to show that red photons
do not have sufficient energy to cause
the neon bulb to fire. Then I turn on
a UVA black light, whose higher en-
406
to the Editor
ergy photons immediately ignite the
neon bulb.
1. Adolf Cortel, “Simple photoelectric
effect,” Phys. Teach. 44, 310–311
(May 2006).
Jeffrey Goldader
The Baldwin School
701 Montgomery Ave.
Bryn Mawr, PA 19010
jgoldader@baldwinschool.org
University Teaching
Credential
I feel there is a need for a new
credential for university and college
faculty—the teaching counterpart
to the Ph.D., which is a research cre-
dential. Unfortunately, many univer-
sities equate the Ph.D. to a teaching
credential when it has nothing at all
to do with teaching. Universities will
typically not hire applicants who do
not hold a Ph.D., despite advertising
that they desire experienced teach-
ers. Many fully qualified teachers are
kept out of university classrooms and
Ph.D. programs because they have
not been involved in research and
usually have no interest in doing so
to begin with. It is quite fallacious to
assume that lack of research equates
to lack of instructional competence.
I have attended professional con-
ferences at which research faculty
openly expressed their discontent at
having to teach, for example, intro-
ductory astronomy or introductory
physics, particularly for nonmajors.
Having a new teaching credential
would allow competent and innova-
tive instructors to take over these
courses while leaving researchers free
to carry on their research, navigate
the tenure process, and spend more
time with graduate students. Perhaps
existing Ed.D. and MAT programs
could be overhauled and made more
rigorous. Perhaps a new T.D. (Doc-
tor of Teaching) credential could be
invented. This is one way to hope-
fully improve the overall quality of
undergraduate science instruction at
the university level. I encourage sci-
ence and education departments to
explore these ideas.
Joe Heafner
heafnerj@sticksandshadows.com
Comment on “Kick-off”
My paper “Kick-off,” published
last May,1 contains an incorrect state-
ment. Indeed, after a perfect elastic
collision, the velocity of the resting
body v can be higher than the veloc-
ity of the incoming body v0. Accord-
ing to the expression
2m0v0
v= ,
m0 + m
when the mass of the incoming
body m0 is higher than the mass of
the resting body m, we have v > v0.
However, this error does not
invalidate the model. To confirm
the validity of the model, I used a
fast video camera, at a rate of 1000
frames per second, to investigate the
deformation of a soccer ball kicked
by an experienced soccer player. The
frames were analyzed with a video
tracking software. The deformation
of the ball was calculated as the dif-
ference between its initial diameter
THE PHYSICS TEACHER ◆ Vol. 44, October 2006
 Letters
pushed by the foot for about 5 ms, as
5
predicted by my model. The velocity
wall
of the ball was about 25 m/s and the
4 kick foot 19 m/s. The velocity of the ball
deformation (cm)

reached the velocity of the foot only

3
2
1 cer players. We also ran tests for the
0
0 5
and the distance between two parallel
planes that confine the ball.
The above figure compares the
ball deformation for a strong hori-
zontal kick and a collision with a
10 15 20 25
time (ms)
rigid wall. The collision time for the
kick is about 15 ms, while the colli-
sion with the wall takes only 8 ms.
This difference is explained by the
fact that during the kick the ball is
at 16 ms.
Note that in this experiment the
ball was kicked with the tip of the
shoe. However, this kind of kick is
rarely executed by professional soc-
more common situations of in-step
and in-front kicks. In these cases the
hauling effect is less pronounced and
the collision times less than 11 ms.
This may explain why the pushing
effect has not been reported before in
the literature.
Armando Vieira
ISEP, R.S. Tomé
4200 Porto
Portugal

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