AP Physics: Board Meeting

We did the first real board meeting using yesterday’s results from the buggy lab. Once again, I borrowed Casey Rutherford’s Observations, Claims, & Evidence structure. Some of the chemistry teachers have been integrating techniques from Modeling Instruction, and I got to reap rewards in a really good first board meeting. There was some discussion about whether some intercepts were small enough to call zero, which, along with a whiteboad where students plotted multiple trials, lead really nicely into an introduction to uncertainty. Next year, I think that would go even smoother if I push all groups to truly make time the independent variable and complete multiple trials.

Physics: Lab Template

For the second round of the dowel lab, I had students follow the lab template we’ll be using this year. I also changed the guiding question to “What is the relationship between the mass and volume of these dowels?” since that more naturally motivates measuring multiple dowels and is closer to the kind of guiding questions we’ll have on future labs.

Chemistry Essentials: Burning Steel Wool

We wrapped up yesterday’s lab by making a post-it histogram of the results students got yesterday, then had some discussion on the significance of those results. Afterward, we continued the mass and change sequence from Modeling Instruction by measuring changes in mass as steel wool burned.