AP Physics: SHM Whiteboarding

Students did some whiteboarding to discuss yesterday’s trio of simple harmonic motion. There was some good discussion about whether the net force on each object is constant or changing for each object. In one section, I asked students for free-body diagrams and vector-addition diagrams to resolve that debate and in the other section, I asked them to sketch velocity vs. time graphs. The velocity vs. time graphs were much more effective for resolving the disagreement.

Physics: Kinetic Energy Board Meeting

Students whiteboarded their results for the kinetic energy lab. This time, I didn’t specifically prompt them to linearize their graphs and only some groups tried plotting change in height vs. velocity squared, which made for a nice discussion.

Chemistry Essentials: Freezing Lauric Acid

Students finished making their graphs, then we discussed the results of the lauric acid lab. A lot of students had trouble with a question about whether you can add energy to a system without changing the temperature, which reinforces my impression that many of those students are having trouble making sense of what the representations we’re using mean. I also forgot I wanted to have my students move before we shifted to whole group discussion and didn’t think of it until after class. Enough groups had trouble shifting to whole class mode that I need to make a note for next time.