Ben Wildeboer

@willyb.bsky.social

811 Followers 217 Following

I teach science and I like it. 9th grade Physics and AP Physics 1. @WillyB in the bird app. #modphys #iteachphysics

The AirNow air quality dashboard showing 370 and Hazardous.
Why do you wear red coats? Military musicians of the period wore the reverse colors of the regiments to which they were assigned. According to General Orders, signed by General George Washington October 2, 1779, regiments from Virginia were to wear Blue Coats with Red Facing [Trim]. Thus, the Fife and Drum Corps wears red coats with blue facing.
Why do you wear red coats? Military musicians of the period wore the reverse colors of the regiments to which they were assigned. According to General Orders, signed by General George Washington October 2, 1779, regiments from Virginia were to wear Blue Coats with Red Facing [Trim]. Thus, the Fife and Drum Corps wears red coats with blue facing.
The Leiknir defense sets up before a free kick from Gröttur.
Butterfly Milkweed
Jenny and Forrest Gump run through the Reflecting Pool. Surely ruining it forever.
My jokey BlueSky license with random stats.
[When Vonnegut tells his wife he's going out to buy an envelope] Oh, she says, well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.
A tasty amber pale ale in a glass being held in front of a grill
A screenshot of text that reads: Kurt Vonnegut tells his wife he's going out to buy an envelope: "Oh, she says, well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And see some great looking babies. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And I'll ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is - we're here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And it's like we're not supposed to dance at all anymore."
Screenshot of my BlueSky app showing my baseball specific list is called "Honkball" as it has been since at least 2013 (well - it was on Twitter then, but still)
A visualization involving a series of dots to represent different BlueSky communities. @willyb is located in the middle of "Science Education Professionals"
A screenshot of the Base Wars NES game showing two cyclo-bot battling after an out.
A screenshot of the 7 day weather forecast showing the high end low temperatures for each day. Next week Friday and Saturday show predicted low temperatures of -20F
From a Libertyville D70 Facebook post: "District 70 administrators recently engaged in a professional development workshop in collaboration with the Lake County Regional Office of Education. The session served as an Admin Academy focused on Preparing Students for an Al Workforce. The workshop featured Dr. Sabba Quidwai, author and speaker, and brought together educational leaders from Community High School District 128, Hawthorn School District 73, Oak Grove School District 68, and Lake Bluff School District 65. The conversation underscored a shared commitment to preparing students for an Al driven future while nurturing creativity, wellness, and meaningful connections across our schools."
My 2026 word for the year: "sultry"
A red tumble buggy is tied by a string to a lab stand so the tumble buggy rotates in a circle.
A screenshot of an AP Physics 1 "menu" for a lab practical exam with 8 different options covering Kinematics, Dynamics, and Circular Motion.
In a physics classroom a cart is accelerated down a track by a mass hanging over a pulley. In the background a screen projects the LoggerPro screen, and right as the cart goes through the photogates the acceleration (a = 2.016 m/s^2) is displayed in large text on the screen.
Looking out the glass-less window of a sticker covered van at a large mural showing Sloth from the Goonies giving a side hug to Burt Reynolds.
A velocity time graph showing a line with a negative intercept and a positive slope, with the line ending on the horizontal axis.
A video shot from a Ferris Wheel overlooking downtown Grayslake , IL at night with all the Christmas Lights up on the trees during the Night of Lights.
Two kids bundled up ready for a cold turkey trot.
A top down view of four pies!
A screenshot of a handout for the PostLab Graph Analysis of a Circular Motion Lab.
GZA - Liquid Swords
A screenshot of Battletoads Level 3.
An upclose Pic of a tumbler filled with a dark beer. The tumbler says "Funkatorium" and has a jaunty golden mushroom design.
A night view of some very red outbursts of Aurora Borealis.
HEY ALL! DOES YOUR E-2I HUMIDIFIER MAKE AN ANNOYING CLICKING NOISE? MINE DID, BUT I FINALLY FIGURED OUT THAT THERE'S AN EASY FIX, SO I MADE THIS VIDEO IN CASE ANYONE ELSE... OH MY GOD. YES. YES. CLICK CLICK I KNOW THERE'S MORE IMPORTANT WORK IN THE WORLD, BUT I FEEL LIKE THESE PEOPLE DESERVE, AT MINIMUM, A STATUE.
The character Director Orson Krennic as played by Ben Mendelsohn in Andor. He's standing facing the camera with his hands clasped in front dressed in Imperial regalia, flanked by two Shock Troopers. (I think?)
A projectile launcher fires a steel ball that later lands directly on top of a toy pirate ship.
A slow motion video of a projectile launcher firing a steel ball that then comes down right on top of a toy pirate ship.
A gif of Ned Flanders saying "A curse on me!"
Screenshot of the Baseball Savant pitch velocity chart showing data for the pitches José Ramirez saw during the 9/24 Tigers v Guardians game.
Multonomah Falls with a footbridge in front of the falls with many people waving from the bridge.
A cover of a local community magazine with the text reading: THE BOYS OF FALL 2025' (that apostrophe at the end is on the cover...)
A steel ball rolls down a ramp in slow motion, then rolls off a table hitting a paper printout of my face directly in the target zone.
Screenshot of a Amplify Desmos Activity builder screen highlighting where to click to edit the computational layer for a Screen.
"The difference between stupid and intelligent people-and this is true whether or not they are well-educated -is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambiguous or even contradictory situations-in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious when things seem overly straightforward." From *The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson
Our daughter, wearing a green singlet and black shorts running toward the finish line from behind.
Mo the plushie Motion Detector! (A plush version of a Go Direct Motion detector with a cute smiling face)
Wide angle shot of an alley between houses with a ping pong table, several children, and various toys littering the scene.
A high school physics classroom with groups of students working at tables. The students are looking down at sets of cards and moving them into organized groups
Several strands of spaghetti lay across a gap between lab tables with a cup hanging from the spaghetti by a string.
AP Physics 1 students working in the lab using tracks, carts, and motion detectors in groups of 2 and 3.
A handout creatively arranged into boxes where students can share bits of information about themselves.
Screen shot of a slide that says: "Can we accurately model the motion of a flywheel car using constant velocity?"
Slide with a POV Pic looking down at a dropped Whirlygig. The slide asks : "What could we change about the Whirlygig to change its flight time?"
A wide angle shot of my classroom at 6:00am - empty with the lights off. Lit by natural light from the windows.
A video of several students spinning a weighted force sensor on a string as data collection for determining the relationships between variables in circular motion.
A picture of narrow streets in Hanoi Vietnam.
A black and white image of a cheerleader from Wauconda High School in 1977. She's standing on the football sidelines and in the middle of a cheer. She's wearing a long sleeved sweatshirt with a stylized W on the front.
An updated, nicer looking version of the curly-cue W from the 1984 Wauconda Cheer sweaters.
The curly-cue W reproduced amateurishly using Adobe Illustrator.
A black and white picture from the 1984 yearbook showing two HS cheerleaders wearing sweaters with a large curly-cue style W.
A black and white photo of the 1920-21 Wauconda Township High School basketball team, showing two rows of high schoolers in vintage basketball gear in from of the old brick high school.
"“Kings. What a good idea.” The idea is powerful, and seductive, and should not be underestimated. To be a civilization of any worth, however, means acknowledging the idea—and then condemning it as laughably, madly stupid." (Robert Jackson Bennett, A Drop of Corruption)
A collage of bookcovers - Ian M. Bank's Consider Phlebus, Adrian Tchaikovsky's Alien Clay, T. Kingfisher's two novels: A Soceress Comes to Call & Nettle and Bone, and Kaliene Bradley's The Ministry of Time.
The cover of the book The Ministry of Time, which featured the title's text in colorful 3D block print.