AP Physics: Vector Addition Diagrams

Students worked through an activity from Casey Rutherford to introduce vector addition diagrams. A few groups started thinking about how they could use trig and other math to do calculations with the shapes they made; one group even came up with the idea of components, which was awesome!

Physics: Motion Detectors

For the first half of class, we did the mistakes game for yesterday’s problems. Based on the mistakes several groups decided to make and the discussion that followed, I realized that a lot of students are drawing their velocity vs. time graphs to look like the motion maps.

After finishing the problems, we got out the motion detector and focused on what the time axis means. Watching the graph form live seemed to help some of the students who’ve been sketching graphs that look like motion maps.

Chemistry Essentials: Water Displacement

Students used displacement of water to find the volume and density of aluminum and brass blocks. I collected results to put on a class graph, and it was interesting to ask students to predict the shape of the graph. A lot of students expect the graph to have no pattern since the blocks are all different shapes. I may need to have them do some particle diagrams tomorrow to help compare.