AP Physics: Projectiles

Students worked on some problems for projectile motion. I overheard a lot of students talking about the labs and demos from last week (which Brian Frank’s post on labs had me listening for!). They could use some more practice justifying answers with physics principles, along with lab results, but that will come.

Physics: Energy Transfer

I used a lab I got from Twitter (I wish I could remember who; if its you, I’m happy to give you credit!). To introduce energy, I had students measure the force and displacement required to pull a cart up ramps with different angles. Then, they sketched force vs. displacement graphs and found the areas.

Chemistry Essentials: Quantitative Gas Laws

Students used PhET’s Gas Properties simulation to get quantitative relationships between temperature and pressure as well as volume and pressure. There were a lot of great observations about the movement of the particles and one student even pointed out the temperature skyrockets when you add gravity, which should feed nicely into tomorrows discussion.