Day 23: Board Meeting, Annotating Graphs, & Gas Laws

October 4, 2018October 4, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

Today was students’ last day before a 3-day weekend and our homecoming pepfest, so classes were short and students were more energetic than usual.

AP Physics: Board Meeting

We had a board meeting for the spring force lab. Students initiated some good discussion about the intercepts in both sections, but I had to do a little coaxing to get them thinking about the values of the slopes. One of the challenges was a lot of groups hadn’t distinguished between mass and force of gravity, which tells me I should have done a little more pre-lab discussion, especially since that distinction was just introduced earlier this week.

Physics: Annotating Graphs

Students whiteboarded yesterday’s problems for a short gallery walk before trying some calculations. I think this is the first year where I didn’t have any students opt to use the formula for the area of a trapezoid on any of their graphs; it just felt more natural to most of my students to split the graph into a triangle and rectangle (which is what I usually do). When students started working with numbers, I had a lot of students independently start talking about specific times and velocities as coordinate pairs, which I haven’t seen students do before and was pretty great.

Chemistry Essentials: Gas Laws

Students sketched their graphs from the past few days for a simplified board meeting. One of the things I really appreciate about this group is I have some students who are really willing to speak up when they are confused about something; one of my students was struggling to see how the graphs fit with the qualitative relationships we found earlier this week and didn’t hesitate to say so, which lead to some valuable discussion about how to read a graph.

Day 22: Spring Force, Annotating Graphs, & Pressure vs. Volume

October 3, 2018October 3, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 1 Comment

AP Physics 1: Spring Force

Students collected data for a relationship between the force on a spring and how much it stretches. I have them collect data for at least two different springs hanging vertically, then pick a spring where they also collect data by pulling it horizontally. I love the moment when groups call me over because something is “wrong” with their graphs because the line for when the spring is vertical matches the line for when the spring is horizontal.

Physics: Annotating Graphs

As a stepping stone to graphical solutions for constant acceleration, students worked on annotating velocity vs. time graphs and building equations from the slope and intercept. Last year, this was really tough, so I changed some of the language I used to try and connect the annotations to the visible features of the graph a little more clearly, and it seemed to click for a lot of students.

Chemistry Essentials: Pressure & Volume

I am being compensated by Pivot Interactives for participating in a pilot of their chemistry materials.

Students used another Pivot Interactives activity. This one used a bubble in a vacuum chamber to allow students to find a relationship between pressure and volume. In a previous lab on volume, finding the volume of a cylinder was a big hurdle for a lot of my students, so it was really nice for them to be able to use the tools in Pivot to do that number crunching without getting hung up on the math.

Day 21: Board Meeting, Quiz, & Quantitative Gas Laws

October 2, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 1 Comment

AP Physics 1: Board Meeting

Students finished up their whiteboards for yesterday’s lab and we had our board meeting. Both classes got really nice results and had good discussions. I’m thinking about moving balanced forces to right after constant velocity next year since it gives some really good opportunities for students to be successful on experimental design.

Physics: Quiz

Today was our quiz on representations for constant acceleration. The quiz was pretty short, but I’ve been giving a few minutes before each quiz for students to do a reflection on their collaboration over the past few days. I also spent a few minutes talking with my students about today’s Nobel Prize announcement, and my students had a lot of questions about both this year’s prize and the Nobel Prize in general.

Chemistry Essentials: Quantitative Gas Laws

I am being compensated by Pivot Interactives for participating in a pilot of their chemistry materials.

Students used Pivot Interactives to collect data for a relationship between pressure and temperature. There were some minor issues with the computers, but once students got logged in they were pretty successful. We only have one gas pressure sensor in the school, so this particular activity makes it possible to do a quantitative lab we otherwise wouldn’t be able to and is more firmly rooted in reality than a simulation. The activity included some questions I really like the temperature when the pressure is zero; I overestimated how well my students understand the intercept of a graph, so I’ll need to make sure I allow time to discuss those questions tomorrow.

Day 20: Force of Gravity, Graph Stacks, & Gas Laws

October 1, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 3 Comments

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.

Day 19: Assessment, Card Sort, & Vocab

September 28, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics 1: Assessment

Students took a quiz on impulse which took a lot longer than I expected; a lot of students spent a lot of time staring in confusion. I think spending Tuesday and Wednesday on forces lead a lot of students to forget how to do impulse and momentum, which tells me I need to work on helping them firm up that model.

Physics: Cart Sort Part 2

Students continued Kelly O’Shea’s kinematics card sort. Today, I added in the word cards and had them record a few of their sorts in their packet.

Chemistry Essentials: Vocab

Before today’s quiz, I had each group prepare a whiteboard with a particle diagram for a different vocabulary term, then had students do a gallery walk.

Day 18: Practice, Card Sort, & Chemical Changes

September 27, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics 1: CVPM and MTM Practice

I am being compensated by Pivot Interactives for participating in a pilot of their chemistry materials.

About half of my students were gone today for a field trip, so I decided to do a lab on Pivot Interactives reviewing constant velocity and impulse since that would be an easy option for absent students to make up. Students analyzed the motion of a puck after a slap shot using CVPM, then analyzed the actual slap shot using momentum transfer.

Physics: Card Sort

A lot of my physics students were also on a field trip today. After a board meeting on the ramp lab, I gave students time to start a Kelly O’Shea’s kinematics card sort. I left out the blank cards and the word cards today so students only had the graphs. Initially, almost every group just put all of the same type of graphs together, so they had a position vs. time graph category, a velocity vs. time graph category, and an acceleration vs. time graph category. I think this was actually helpful to a lot of students, since it drove home that the graphs were telling them different things about the motion. Once groups showed me their initial sorting, I challenged them to come up with another sorting where they could put two or more graphs of the same type together, which lead to great conversations about what the graphs showed and lots of students working on specific language.

Chemistry Essentials: Chemical Change

Students did a few different chemical reasons in test tubes to look for signs of chemical changes. I saw some preconceptions coming up that a chemical change should lead to a change in mass, so that is something I need to think about how to address going forward. I think part of that comes from the fact that I referenced burning steel wool as a chemical change early in this unit, when the chemical reaction that formed a precipitate from the same sequence would have been a better choice.

Day 17: Free Body Diagrams, Whiteboard Prep, & Describing Substances

September 26, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics 1: Free Body Diagrams

Students started working on some free body diagrams by diving straight into some mistakes whiteboarding. There was a lot of great conversation about the problems where an object was moving with a constant velocity as students did the expected wrestling with how an object is moving forward without a force in that direction. One of my classes also had some surprisingly good conversation about systems with a problem about an object at rest.

Physics: Whiteboard Prep

Students worked on their graphs and prepped whiteboards to discuss the ramp lab. With this being their first experience linearizing and their first time using Desmos, it took some time to get the boards ready. I think next year I’d like to introduce Desmos with the buggy lab so there is a little less new material going on in the ramp lab.

Chemistry Essentials: Describing Substances

Students did a worksheet to practice with yesterday’s vocabulary, then I had them prep whiteboards and do a gallery walk to check their work.

Day 16: Interaction Stations, Data Collection, & Describing Substances

September 25, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 1 Comment

AP Physics 1: Interaction Stations

Students worked through Brian Frank’s interaction stations to start thinking about different types of forces. I included one with a buggy spinning its wheels on a brush, which lead to some nice discussion about the way friction plays an important role in forward motion.

Physics: Data Collection

Students continued working on collecting data for a cart on a ramp. Today, I gave the additional task of collecting velocity vs. time data for their cart. Today was much smoother than yesterday now that students have had some practice with the equipment.

ramp lab

Chemistry Essentials: Describing Substances

Students mixed pure iron and pure sulfur, then heated them to start thinking about physical and chemical changes, as well as to introduce language for different combinations. I introduced a lot more vocab today than I normally would, so I need to think about better ways to split this up. Students did make some great observations as they worked through the lab.

fe s.jpg

Day 15: SOS Diagrams, Ramp Lab, & Density Representations

September 24, 2018September 24, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics 1: SOS Diagrams

I took a few minutes to introduce SOS diagrams for momentum and impulse, then had students whiteboard some problems. The biggest challenge was thinking through what are useful snapshots to use but, once students wrapped their heads around that, things seemed to go very smoothly.

Physics: Ramp Lab

Students started collecting data to make position vs. time graphs for a cart on a ramp. This was their first time using the tracks and their first time using LabQuests, so it was a lot to take in. Several groups commented the first data point was the hardest to get, but, once they knew what they were doing, the data collection was quick and easy.

ramp lab.jpg

Chemistry Essentials: Density Representations

Today was the density quiz, so we started by using whiteboards to review some different ways to represent density. Most students seem pretty solid on the particle diagrams, but mass vs. volume graphs are challenging for a lot of them. In general, graphs have been challenging for a lot of my chemistry students this year, largely because I overestimated their prior knowledge and haven’t adapted as well as I’d like.

density particle.jpg

Day 14: Board Meeting, Dueling Buggies, & Density Challenge

September 21, 2018 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics 1: Board Meeting

We had a board meeting on the impulse lab students have been working on. There were a few groups with really nice results, but this is a very tough one to get consistently accurate slopes, which made the discussion tough, even though my students did a nice job. It was a little tricky getting to the formula we’ll be using for impulse since the lab had a non-constant force, but the equation assumes a constant one. Next year, I might switch to the half-Atwood machine, rather than saving it for unbalanced forces.

Physics: Dueling Buggies

Students finished up the dueling buggies lab practical. I saw a much wider range of approaches than in my AP classes this year; most of my AP students are in the same math classes, which I think encourages them to think about problems in similar ways. My regular classes, meanwhile, have a much wider range of students, so there was a lot of great discussion about different ways to think about this problem.

Chemistry Essentials: Density Challenge

I am receiving access to Pivot Interactives this year in exchange for piloting some of their chemistry activities.

Students used Pivot Interactives to make mass vs. volume graphs to identify unknown liquids by their density. A lot of students had some trouble getting started, but, once I pointed out the similarities to the density of water lab we’d done, they were very successful. The videos don’t zero the balance so that the graph will end up with an intercept; this was the first graph with a non-zero intercept they’ve seen in this class, so it was challenging, but we were able to work through it. I think just about every group picked gallium as their unknown liquid, which is fitting, since it would be the hardest to do in the classroom.