AP Physics: Board Meeting

Today, we had two board meetings. First, we discussed the results of last week’s electric potential difference lab, followed by yesterday’s work on Ohm’s Law. The potential difference discussion went well, but the Ohm’s Law lab was trickier. This is the first lab I did as pretty open inquiry where students were working with three different variables, and a lot of groups struggled to relate all three. Next year, I may go back to having students do two separate experiments. There were also several groups who used the battery’s internal resistance and I think a little more pre-lab discussion could have avoided that.

Physics: Impulse

Students tied a cart to a force sensor with an elastic string and collected data for a relationship between the area of the force vs. time graph and the cart’s change in velocity. A lot of students had some trouble with the idea that they were graphing features of the LabQuest graphs, but were able to make sense of what was going on with some support.

Chemistry Essentials: Valence Electrons

Students sketch Bohr models for selected elements to start identifying patterns in the number of valence electrons. Students seemed pretty successful at making sense of why certain elements have certain charges. I also got out the electrolysis machine to give an example of how we know the ratio of elements in a compound.