AP Physics: Conservation Problems

I left my AP classes to chaperone a field trip, so they worked on some conservation of energy problems. I’m not sure how I want to go over the problems yet; based on what I saw in class yesterday, they are pretty solid on making bar charts, but are a little shaky on connecting them to specific quantities. I might do the mistakes game, focusing on setting up the equations.

Physical Science: 1st Law

Students did a lab based on various tricks using Newton’s 1st Law where they focused on writing good explanations of WHY the trick worked. For conceptual development, I don’t like this as much as the bowling ball and mallet lab I do in physics, but I like that they get a chance to practice explaining things using Newton’s Laws, which is important in helping them connect the science to the upcoming engineering project. Next year, I might try to add a day to this unit so we can do some version of both.