AP Physics: Project Intro

For the rest of the trimester, my students will be working on a project I borrowed from Casey Rutherford. They will pick something they are interested in, explain it using physics from the course, then do some kind of data collection and modeling. A lot of students seem really excited about the project. I’m embedding checkpoints about once a week so I can make sure students stay on track. Today, with most of my students taking the AP Literature exam, I gave them time to start playing with ideas for a topic.

A few students played with balanced torques today

Earth Science: Convection Currents

I’ve been working on replacing the notes in Earth Science with more hands-on activities, but I caved and gave the slides on how convection currents drive plate tectonics today. I really like the way this brought together a lot of ideas from labs we’ve been doing recently, but I found myself wishing that students had some exposure to mountain-building and volcanoes, which are the next unit.