AP Physics: Energy

Students whiteboarded CER statements for various energy questions, including their answers to where the bouncy ball loses energy and why the tiny bouncy ball from a seismic accelerator flies off. I really liked that different groups tended to take different approaches, which made for some good sharing of ideas once whiteboards were ready and made students very confident in their responses.

Physical Science: Crashes

Students attached their cargo carriers to trucks, then sent them down to ramps for head-on collisions. My students usually get pretty animated on this day, which usually includes a lot of bragging about how well they expect their design to do. For some reason, a lot of students in this class were expecting their eggs to break right away, including some students who were filled with confidence yesterday, and the class as a whole was very anxious and nervous. None of the points come from how well the design performs, so it was interesting to see how much tension some students were feeling, anyway.