This week’s big theme was using precise, specific language in physics.

Physics: Buggy Lab & Problems

Students did the buggy lab, then worked on some problems with constant velocity representations. We went over the problems using Kelly O’Shea’s mistakes whiteboarding. Both during the buggy board meeting and during the mistakes whiteboarding, students used a lot of phrasing like “the slope is increasing” to indicate a positive slope or even just saying “the buggy was decreasing”, rather than specifying what about the buggy is decreasing, which made for some good opportunities to pick apart that wording and try to find ways to make it clearer what they meant. A few students seemed like they were frustrated by these conversations, especially during mistakes whiteboarding when a group didn’t consider that one of their mistakes, which tells me I need to keep working on emphasizing growth.

AP Physics 1: Problems & Acceleration Model-Building

AP also had their first round of mistakes whiteboarding this week. While we had some similar conversations about language, I noticed fewer students who seemed frustrated by those conversations. I don’t think I approached getting nitpicky about wording differently than I did in Physics, so I’m not sure if the AP students were doing more hiding their frustration or if they are bringing something to the class that leaves them less bothered by me getting picky about language.

After the problems, we started a model-building lab for constant acceleration where we used photogates to produce a position vs. time graph for a cart on a ramp. This lab is fairly teacher-directed since its the first time students are using any LabQuest probes, and it takes a while to get through. I’ve thought about switching to motion detectors or video analysis, but with the limited computer access I usually have, I like that photogates produce data that students can linearize. My building added a lot more laptop carts this year, so I might try one of the other options when Physics gets to acceleration.