AP Physics 1: Force of Gravity

Students collected data to find a relationship between the force of gravity on an object and its mass. Not surprisingly, data is coming out pretty nicely. This is also giving students a chance to have some good conversations about uncertainty since their cognitive load on the rest of the lab is a little lighter.

Physics: Graph Stacks

Students whiteboarded some problems from the Modeling Instruction curriculum sketching kinematic graph stacks for a cart on a ramp, a few of which we tested using a ramp with a motion encoder cart. I also got out Brian Frank’s magnetic vectors for the first time, which made it much easier to discuss the motion maps. For the problems we couldn’t test, I had students whiteboard a problem, then get with a group that did the same problem to come to a consensus, which lead to some great conversations between groups that disagreed.

Chemistry Essentials: Gas Laws

I got out some sealed syringes to do a qualitative exploration of ideal gas laws. Students made some great observations, and developed a nice, kinesthetic understanding of what pressure is.