I like to say that the subject of physics combines the two best things in the Universe: math and toys! (Students seem to most readily agree with the latter.)
Hands-on, collaborative laboratory investigations are the lifeblood of all the courses I teach. The ability to offer a wide variety of high-quality lab activities helps us to meet the needs of a wide range of students, from the algebra-1 students in our Conceptual Physics Course to the calculus students in AP Physics C – Mechanics. By combining precise measurements with reasoning and calculation, lab investigations transform abstract concepts from the textbook and class notes into intuitive reality. If we could not afford to purchase and maintain this equipment, we would not be able to offer outstanding classes like this, in which students apply their knowledge of science to build, code, and troubleshoot mechanisms meant to solve real-world problems.
Finding sources of funding to purchase such lab equipment is therefore paramount to what I do! Below I shall describe some of the successes I’ve achieved over the years in finding ways to afford the highest quality, fun, and engaging equipment which has led directly to the achievement of my students.
1. Requesting Donations from Parents from Day One
I have been a science teacher at Granada High School in Livermore, California for more than 25 years. Since even before my time at GHS, it has been a practice of the Science Department, in their letters home to parents and guardians on the first day of school, to request donations to help pay for the lab equipment we will be using the class. We definitely emphasize that this is a request, and not a requirement, but point out that it is directly due their generosity that we can afford the newest (and coolest!) lab equipment. (I certainly acknowledge that in the hometown of Lawrence Livermore and Sandia National Laboratories, we have a community especially receptive to such requests.)
Some teachers request specific amounts, usually $10 or $20. I’ve left it more open-ended in my requests. Many parents donate in the $20 range, but there are always a handful who donate $100 or more. A couple times parents even donated $1000, though those were certainly (very appreciated) exceptions! In total, every year our department receives thousands of dollars in donations that we can use to supplement district funds to purchase lab and demo equipment, big and small, throughout the year.
Until recently we simply asked parents to write donation checks. In the last couple of years, we’ve included a QR code in our letters home. Parents can simply scan the QR code and donate directly to an account for our Science Department.
2. Following up on Parents’ Night
Every fall, about 3 weeks (give or take) into the new school year, we host Back-to-School Night. Parents visit each of their children’s classrooms and meet their teachers. Teachers do a 10-minute presentation, introducing themselves, their class, and their policies to the parents, then the bell rings and parents are on their way to their child’s next class. Every year, I begin my presentation by thanking all of the parents who have already sent in donations. I then tell them that it is because of their generosity that their children get to interact with such engaging (and fun!) lab equipment. I have several examples of such equipment set up to share with the parents and show them specifically the kind of awesome products their funds help us afford.
I start by showing some lab equipment we’ve already used. During the first couple days of school, students will have already executed a lab determining which variables (mass, string length, release angle) affect the period of a pendulum. (Since hands-on labs are where students are most engaged – and therefore learn the most – I like to start off with a lab right away, and no background knowledge is needed to perform this investigation. But it gets them working with their hands and minds from the first moment, figuring out how to perform controlled experiments, measure data, plot that data, and draw reasonable conclusions!) The equipment we use includes swinging masses and infrared photogates attached to heavy duty workshop stands. These photogates are capable of measuring time with a precision of one ten-thousandth of a second!
Photogates are also used on the next lab I demonstrate: a car rolling down a ramp with a little plastic “flag” passing through two photogates on the descent. Usually this is the lab we’re doing the same week as Back-to-School Night. Here students use the data they obtain from the photogates to measure the near instantaneous velocity of the cart at both points where the photogates are attached, and further can calculate the acceleration of the car as it rolled down the slope. Different investigations can be performed here – from showing that mass doesn’t affect the magnitude of the acceleration, to using the angle of the ramp and some trigonometry (I do this with my Honors and AP classes) to calculate the acceleration due to gravity. I’ve then pointed out that the exact same equipment will be used in a few weeks when we’re learning Newton’s laws of motion. Instead of measuring acceleration initially, students will use their knowledge of force and motion to predict acceleration first and then compare with the experimental results.
Finally, I will show a couple more lab set-ups that will be used later in the course. Typically, I set the Racing Marbles lab to demonstrate conservation of energy, but the piece de resistance is the frictionless air track used to investigate how momentum and kinetic energy are conserved (or not) in elastic and inelastic collisions.
Parents are usually very impressed with this awesome equipment. I’ve received many comments that this type of equipment goes far beyond the low-tech equipment they remember from their own high school science experiences. I remind them that it is because of their donations that we can afford these incredible labs, and that if they haven’t already donated, we’d be happy to accept donations any time of the year! Impressed with what they’ve seen, many parents indeed send in donations after Back-to-School Night.
3. Engage Parent Organizations
A few years ago, I got a surprising but very welcome email. The new president of the Granada Supporters Club wanted to know if he could drop by my classroom after school and introduce himself. I said of course! The Granada Supporters Club is an organization of Granada High School parents whose goal is to raise money to support programs at GHS. The new president explained that one of his goals was to expand beyond athletics (on which the club had previously focused all of their efforts) to support academic programs as well.
He then explained that his son took my physics class the previous year. He was very impressed with all of the hands-on labs his son enthusiastically described often at their dinner table. He knew these engaging lab investigations had a direct impact helping his son not only succeed in - but also learn to love – physics! He said he wanted to support such classroom learning, and he asked me if there was any equipment I would like assistance with purchasing that his club could help me with. As it happened, I did a running wish list of new lab and demo equipment I was hoping to get soon which I told him about, and – long story short – I soon had that equipment in my classroom!
I was very lucky that the president of the Granada Supporters was proactive enough to approach me and offer support. That said, many schools have similar clubs or PTA groups that would be open to help funding hands-on lab equipment for science classrooms if approached.
4. Engage Other Community Organizations
A little over a decade ago our District decided to add Principles of Engineering to Granada High School’s offerings. The curriculum of this class was written by Project Lead the Way – an organization which develops hands-on, project-based STEM courses for K-12. The version of the curriculum we adopted was specifically written around students working with VEX robotics kits and PC laptops. (At least at the time, no other brands of laptops ran the software necessary for the class.) As part of the start-up costs of offering a new class, our District was willing to pay for the VEX kits, but encouraged us as a school to find external funding to purchase a class set of PCs. We wrote an application to our local Rotary Club which subsequently granted us (if I recall correctly) $6000 to help purchase a class set of PC laptops. After their generous donation, I made it a point to attend their next monthly breakfast to thank them personally. I have to say, our Rotary Club is some of the finest – and funniest – folks to spend a morning with!
5. Be Proactive and Keep your Ear to the Ground for Opportunities
Several years ago, interest in physics grew amongst our student population to the point that we were able to offer AP Physics C – Mechanics for the first time. Adding a second year, college level physics course necessitated purchasing a lot of new equipment. Fortunately I applied for and was granted an AP STEM grant through a partnership between Google and DonorsChoose.org. Through this grant, I received about $7000 in funds to purchase new equipment. The only stipulation was that I prove my readiness to teach this class by attending an AP Summer Institute, but I imagine I would have wanted to do that anyway!
Unfortunately, this specific AP STEM grant is no longer offered by Google, but DonorsChoose.org remains a fantastic way to raise money for projects and equipment for your classroom. Other companies still partner with Donors Choose. Many of my colleagues in the GHS Science Department have been very successful in acquiring funds through the partnership of Donors Choose and Chevron.
So, as a teacher, how do you find out about opportunities like these? For better or worse, we now live in a world of AI. (I believe on the whole, the tool that AI is represents more of a boon to the world than a liability, but don’t get me started on issues regarding academic honesty…) As I said earlier, I am privileged to teach in a community that embraces science and education to an incredible degree. What about all those cities in the world that don’t host national laboratories? I picked a kind of random example – my hometown of Kalamazoo, Michigan. I just asked ChatGPT, “What community organizations in and around Kalamazoo, Michigan might be available to help fund purchases of hands-on lab equipment for high school classrooms?” I was rewarded with a very specific list of eight education-focused and/or STEM-oriented organizations in the Kalamazoo area that would be possible sources of donations. The opportunities are out there – you just have to seek them out!
Tom Shefler
Physics Instructor
Tom Shefler has worked at Granada High School in Livermore, California since the year 2000. He currently teachers Physics, Conceptual Physics, Honors Physics, IB Physics Standard Level, and AP Physics C - Mechanics. He's also taught Astronomy, AP Calculus AB and BC, and Principles of Engineering, a Project Lead the Way course. Since 2006, he's also served as a faculty scholar at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory where he's helped teach the summer Teacher Research Academy workshops and has been part of several of the Lab's Science on Saturday lectures. He's also been a co-leader of PTSOS since 2016, hosting workshops with the aim of helping new physics teachers gain ideas for labs and activities they can bring to their classrooms.
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