AP Physics: Mistakes Game

My students LOVE using the mistakes game to go over problems (a few have even decided to sneak in mistakes when they whiteboard problems in calculus), but it doesn’t lend itself nicely to complicated calculations like projectiles. To get around that, I tried having students whiteboard just the set-up to Friday’s problems for the mistakes game. Students embraced it and we had some good discussions about the physics without getting bogged down in the algebra. Since students did not see full solutions to the problems during class, I posted the answers, along with my complete solution to one of the problems, on Google Classroom.

The artist made sure I saw the person on the bottom floor (where they physics room is) is happy and focused, while the history student on the top floor is angry enough to throw a book

Physical Science: Light the Bulb

Students were given an assortment of materials and tasked with lighting a light bulb. Afterward, we watched a clip from Minds of Our Own of MIT graduates attempting the same task. Students were pretty successful at picking out some of the key ideas about what a circuit is. Tomorrow, we’re using the PhET circuit construction kit, and I’ll probably have them start with the same task in the sim to reinforce that a circuit is a closed path since its not obvious with the light bulb.