Today is the last day before spring break.

AP Physics: Free Response

We took some time to look at the free response problems from the tri 2 final exam. A lot of students ran out of time on the final, so we spent some time discussing strategies for time management and steps they can take even when they think they are lost on a problem. We didn’t talk about anything ground-breaking and even the physics seemed pretty clear once we got into it; I think the stress of finals got to students and made it tough to use skills they know.

Physics: Projectile Practical

Students wrapped up the horizontal projectile practical from yesterday. One of the advantages of doing projectiles after energy is I didn’t trip up any groups by switching out the marble for a lighter one. Usually, I get at least some groups that do some wild math to try and figure out what the mass changes, but this year’s students either pointed out the mass never showed up in their calculations or used conservation of energy to show it doesn’t matter.

Chemistry Essentials: Quiz

Students took a quiz on balancing and representing chemical reactions. I always have a few students in this course who have trouble staying quiet once they are finished; today, all of the conversations I shut down while students were testing were about problems on the quiz, which was pretty awesome. I felt a little bad telling them it wasn’t the right time for those conversations, especially with how passionate the conversations were.