Physics: Cart Explosion Lab

This week, we wrapped up the cart explosion lab and started working on momentum bar charts. My students had really good results on the cart explosion lab, but connecting it to momentum in the discussion is always rough. Students launch a spring-loaded cart and a standard cart off each other, figuring out where on a track to start them so they reach the ends at the same time, then record the ratio of the cart’s masses and the ratio of the distances they travelled before changing the mass and trying again. While I love that this low-tech approach incentivizes students to look for a pattern while they are collecting data, students struggle to connect the distances travelled to the velocities, I think mostly because there are so many different numbers flying around. During the discussion, my students had great results, but needed a lot of support to connect them to momentum. I want to rethink our momentum unit anyway, and I think part of that will include clarifying what I want students to get out of this lab and whether there are better ways to achieve that purpose.

AP Physics 1: Projectile Graphs

We started the week with a Pivot Interactives activity that shows three views of a projectile (full disclosure: I am an activity writer for Pivot Interactives). I’ve done video analysis, but I really like the way seeing the motion from different angles solidifies what I mean by the horizontal and vertical motion. It’s been a while since we did much with velocity vs. time graphs and students made solid connections to the forces acting on the projectile. We also worked through an activity I got from Michael Lerner where students describe the motion of an orange falling from a tower using every model we’ve learned so far, which really helped reinforce for students are aren’t really doing something new, just applying what we know to a new context.