Students learn about kinetic and potential energy, including various types of potential energy: chemical, gravitational, elastic and thermal energy. They identify everyday examples of these energy types, as well as the mechanism of corresponding energy transfers. They learn that energy can be neither created nor destroyed and that relationships exist between a moving object's mass and velocity. Further, the concept that energy can be neither created nor destroyed is reinforced, as students see the pervasiveness of energy transfer among its many different forms. A PowerPoint(TM) presentation and post-quiz are provided.

Students are introduced to the definition of energy and the concepts of kinetic energy, potential energy, and energy transfer. This lesson is a broad overview of concepts that are taught in more detail in subsequent lessons and activities in this curricular unit. A PowerPoint(TM) presentation and pre/post quizzes are provided.

Students explore the sound, evolution, performance techniques, and culture of guitar-like instruments from around the world.

In a hands-on way, students explore light's properties of absorption, reflection, transmission and refraction through various experimental stations within the classroom. To understand absorption, reflection and transmission, they shine flashlights on a number of preselected objects. To understand refraction, students create indoor rainbows. An understanding of the fundamental properties of light is essential to designing an invisible laser security system.

Students create movements to represent long and short rhythmic patterns and compose patterns using non-traditional notation.

Exploring Movie Construction and Production contains eight chapters of the major areas of film construction and production. The discussion covers theme, genre, narrative structure, character portrayal, story, plot, directing style, cinematography, and editing. Important terminology is defined and types of analysis are discussed and demonstrated. An extended example of how a movie description reflects the setting, narrative structure, or directing style is used throughout the book to illustrate building blocks of each theme. This approach to film instruction and analysis has proved beneficial to increasing students’ learning, while enhancing the creativity and critical thinking of the student.

Through this lesson and its series of hands-on mini-activities, students answer the question: How can we investigate and measure the inside of an object or its structure if we cannot take it apart? Unlike the destructive nuclear weapon test (!), nondestructive evaluation (NDE) methods are able to accomplish this. After an introductory slide presentation, small groups rotate through five mini-activity stations: 1) applying Maxwell’s equations, 2) generating currents, 3) creating magnetic fields, 4) solving a system of equations, and 5) understanding why the finite element method (FEM) is important. Through the short experiments, students become familiar with the science and physics being used and make the mathematical connections. They explore components of NDE and see how engineers find unseen flaws and cracks in materials that make aircraft. A pre/post quiz, slide presentation and worksheet are included.

The reason why Randall Fallows wrote Exploring Perspectives: A Concise Guide to Analysis is simple; to help give students a better understanding of how to discover, develop, and revise an analytical essay. Here is how his 5 chapter book goes about doing just that:The first two chapters focus on the nature of an analysis and what’s involved in writing an analytical essay. First, Randall shows that analysis consists of a balance of assertions (statements which present their viewpoints or launch an exploration of their concerns), examples (specific passages/scenes/events which inspire these views), explanations (statements that reveal how the examples support the assertions), and significance (statements which reveal the importance of their study to personal and/or cultural issues).After showing why each feature should be present throughout an essay, he reveals how to ”set the stage“ for producing one of their own. He first helps students to evaluate their own views on a subject and to examine how these views emerge from their own experiences, values and judgments. He, then, shows them how to research what others have said about the subject and provides suggestions for evaluating and incorporating this research into their own perspectives.Finally, Randall discusses the nature of writing, not as a linear procedure, but as a recursive process where the discovery and clarification of a concept occur simultaneously.The remaining three chapters reveal more specific advice on how to develop an analytical essay.Exploring Perspectives: A Concise Guide to Analysis by Randall Fallows is a great text to prepare any student to write analytical essays for the argument and persuasion courses.

Instructors: The Third Edition includes a set of test banks which are not available to the public. For access to these resources, please contact Dr. Barbara Tucker at btucker@daltonstate.edu.

Exploring Public Speaking: The Free College Public Speaking Textbook began as the brainchild of Dr. Kris Barton, Chair of the Department of Communication at Dalton State College. It also was made possible through a generous Textbook Transformation Grant in 2015 from Affordable Learning Georgia, a highly successful program of the University System of Georgia. Dr. Barton asked me to help him author/compile the text.

The goal was to provide a high-quality, usable, accessible, and low-cost textbook for the hundreds of students who take COMM 1110 at Dalton State College every year. This course is required of all degree-seeking students. We have been able to save students hundreds of thousands of dollars already with this text. Unexpectedly and happily, the text has also been downloaded close to 14,000 times (as of August 2018) all over the world and has been adopted at many other institutions.

Dr. Barton and I worked on creating the textbook from July 2015 until May 2016, with the goal of going live with the text in Summer of 2016. Tragically Dr. Barton passed away in early May, a reality that still does not seem real. He has been greatly missed as a friend, colleague, father, scholar, teacher, and mentor.

The launch of the book proceeded; however, due to the loss of Dr. Barton, the ancillaries were not finished. In Summer 2017 I took on a significant revision and updating which I named the Second Edition. I included in that edition information on college student success in the appendices. In January 2018, a colleague, Matthew LeHew, and I won a grant from the University System to create the ancillaries and improve the format for more accessibility. I decided to remove the “Dalton State” from the title and most examples for wider appeal. An appendix on library research retains the information for specific use of Roberts Library on our campus.

Over 90% of the book is original with Dr. Barton, me, or other colleagues at Dalton State College. Some parts, specifically from Chapters 9, 10, and 15, are adapted from another open resource public speaking text whose author prefers not to be cited.

This Third Edition, along with including necessary updates and being formatted with different software, includes four more appendices: one on online speaking, one on APA, one on humor and storytelling in public speaking, and one on Dalton State’s Library. I have also tried to clarify concepts, to provide “case studies” to show the rhetorical process, and include more outlines and examples.

We think this book is especially useful in coverage of PowerPoint, audience responsiveness, ethics in public speaking, special occasion speeches, and structure of speeches. Three ancillaries are available: electronic “flash cards” for study, Powerpoints on the 15 main chapters, and test banks for the 15 main chapters.

Thank you for downloading Exploring Public Speaking, and the co-authors and I truly wish you happy teaching and learning with it. We welcome input. If you choose to use it, let us know at btucker@daltonstate.edu.

Diverse literary texts provide opportunities for making connections about race and hearing multiple voices and perspectives. In this activity, students read literature and poetry from different American writers, reflecting on the meaning and experiences of race in the United States. Due to copyright restrictions, we cannot reproduce the texts here, but the instructions below include anthologies and links to online sources where the texts can be printed out.

Student teams formulate and complete space/earth/ocean exploration-based design projects with weekly milestones. This course introduces core engineering themes, principles, and modes of thinking, and includes exercises in written and oral communication and team building. Specialized learning modules enable teams to focus on the knowledge required to complete their projects, such as machine elements, electronics, design process, visualization and communication. Examples of projects include surveying a lake for millfoil from a remote controlled aircraft, then sending out robotic harvesters to clear the invasive growth; and exploration to search for the evidence of life on a moon of Jupiter, with scientists participating through teleoperation and supervisory control of robots.

In this lesson students look at primary source images and read short secondary texts to understand slave life. In the activity, the teacher models and students practice differentiating between different types of text (primary, secondary, etc.) they might encounter in the social studies classroom. Students show their understanding of a passage's central concepts by selecting words and phrases to compose a "found poem" about the main ideas of the text. This lesson was designed for struggling readers and ESL/ELL students.

Students explore the methods engineers have devised for harnessing sunlight to generate power. First, they investigate heat transfer and heat storage through the construction, testing and use of a solar oven. With a lesson focused on photovoltaic cells, students learn the concepts of energy conversion, conservation of energy, current and voltage. By constructing model solar powered cars, students see these conceptual ideas manifested in modern technology. Furthermore, the solar car project provides opportunities to explore a number of other topics, such as gear ratios and simple mechanics. Both of these design and construction projects are examples of engineering design.

Students will review their knowledge of tension and focus on tensile loads and failure caused by them.

Students learn the basics of the electromagnetic spectrum and how various types of electromagnetic waves are related in terms of wavelength and energy. In addition, they are introduced to the various types of waves that make up the electromagnetic spectrum including, radio waves, ultraviolet waves, visible light and infrared waves. These topics help inform students before they turn to designing solutions to an overarching engineering challenge question.

To evaluate the different integumentary systems found in the animal kingdom, students conduct an exploratory research-based lab. During the activity, students create a model epidermis that contains phosphorescent powder and compare the results to a control model. After learning about the variations of integumentary systems—systems that comprise the skin and other appendages that act to protect animal bodies from damage—students act as engineers to mimic animal skin samples. Their goal is to create a skin sample that closely represents the animal they are mimicking while protecting the base ‘epidermis’ from UV light.