AP Physics: Unbalanced Force Problems

Students started some problems on unbalanced forces. I started by having a group demonstrate their success on last week’s lab practical, then asked students what should happen if we swapped out a lighter marble. Once we tried it, we used vector addition diagrams to find the acceleration of each marble and show the mass doesn’t matter.

Physics: Quantitative Interactions

I borrowed an idea from Kelly O’Shea (I think she’s planning a blog post) and, instead of doing balanced force problems on a worksheet or out of the textbook, I gave students 5 different stations to work through. Several groups went back to their force of gravity lab to figure out the first station, which was great for reinforcing that the labs and problems are connected. The downside is I used a mass today that many used on their lab, so they were able to just read off their data table.

Chemistry Essentials: Bohr Model

Students used PhET’s Build an Atom simulation to play with the Bohr model. The activity took a little longer than I thought, so no one was able to finish, but students were having some good questions about the changes as they added pieces to their atoms and how that fit with patterns on the periodic table. At the end of the hour, I got out the gas tubes and diffraction gratings so students could see some of the evidence for the Bohr Model. They had a lot of questions we didn’t have time to answer, but I’m hoping that will make for a good way to start class tomorrow. I’ve been trying to put something engaging and thought-provoking at the end of the hour to combat students trying to line up at the door or slip out of the classroom in a positive way, and its had the side effect of making it easier to start class the next day since students show up with questions they are excited about answering.