AP Physics: Superposition

After a little playing with the snakey springs, students went to Pivot Interactives to explore wave superposition. There was a lot of great discussion about whether the wave pulses passed through each other or bounced off each other with students making some pretty detailed observations of the pulses.

Physics: Energy Practical

Students worked on using conservation of energy to determine where to place a photogate on a ramp to get a cart moving at a certain velocity. A lot of groups had trouble interpreting their height measurements; I think a lot of them were not keeping track of where they placed the reference height. One group recognized this is pretty similar to the kinetic energy lab we did and used their lab results to confirm today’s calculation.

Chemistry Essentials: Atomic Models

I still haven’t found a way I’m really happy with to address the state standard about the evolution of atomic models, but today was the day I tried. I used a POGIL activity where students read some summaries of the major steps in the atomic model and answered some questions. A few students felt overwhelmed by the length of the reading, so we talked about how to use the section headings to make it more manageable. I liked this better than last tri’s jigsaw since doing the full reading seemed to help more of them see the different models as part of the same story.