Notes and Thoughts about the Core Knowledge Presentation:

I have added one slide to my presentation - a slide that I did not actually show at the conference. It is the slide pointing out the "core knowledge" aspect of what I try to teach in How Things Work. The point of that slide is to recognize that much of what is taught as "physics" is not physics at all. Struggling with the concepts of physics is hard work for both instructor and student, so it is easier to fiddle with formulas, numbers, words, dates, names, and the like and pretend that all those are somehow equivalent to real understanding. I don't think so.

The slides do not show what demonstrations I did in the presentation. Here is a brief discussion of those demonstrations, most of which can be found at:

http://howeverythingworks.org/demonstrations.pdf

Roller Coasters:

Bicycle:

Clocks:

Microwave Ovens: