AP Physics: Pendulums & Springs

Students wrapped up their labs on what affects the period of  springs and pendulums, then whiteboarded the results. I could tell I was rushing the lab more than I have in the past and I ended up taking over a lot of the post-lab discussion and got a bit hand-wavy. As I rush through the last few topics, I haven’t been doing as much with uncertainty, and this is a lab where it would have really helped. I also skipped having students predict the period of a 5 m long pendulum, which made it much tougher to settle on which relationship works best for the length of a pendulum. Going into waves, I need to think about how I will balance the need to keep moving with giving students time to truly engage with the content.

Earth Science: Dam Removal

Students continued work on their dam removal project. Today, they looked at a gradual release, which we modeled by removing one lay of foam at a time. I was very pleased at some of the detailed observations students made and how engaged they were in trying to think about why their observations happened. I’d love to re-work this unit to give students a better grasp of sediment transport in rivers before looking at dams specifically to give them more tools for thinking about the project.