AP Physics: Vector Addition

I shamelessly stole an activity that Casey Rutherford shared on Twitter. I gave students some free-body diagrams drawn to scale, and had them use pipe cleaners to rearrange the vectors and do some graphical vector addition. The activity not only reinforced graphical vector addition, but I was pleased with how it drove home the difference between forces that are balanced and forces that are equal.

Physical Science: Electric Power

Students plugged different light bulbs into Kill-A-Watt monitors to find the power each one used. To emphasize the connection to energy, I also had students sketch energy bar charts for each light bulb, using light and thermal energy as their energy types. This lead very nicely into a comparison of the efficiency of different light bulb types.