Days 63-67: LOL Diagrams & Newton’s 3rd Law

December 13, 2019March 20, 2020 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics 1: LOL Diagrams

Students worked on sketching bar charts and LOL diagrams to show energy transfers. I was really pleased with how comfortable students were switching between different systems. I started out the week by having students use a spring scale to pull a cart up different ramps, always raising their cart to the same height above the table. We then sketched force vs. displacement graphs to introduce the idea of work and gravitational potential energy. Getting both simultaneously meant the concepts blurred together for students at first, but that issue got resolved as we did mistakes whiteboarding with energy bar charts and LOL diagrams.

Physics: Newton’s 3rd Law

One of our major tasks this week was developing Newton’s 3rd Law. Students started by predicting how the forces on two colliding carts would compare, then we tested out the collisions. As we tested the collisions, I cued students to notice the relative accelerations of the carts, which I think helped students see the useful thinking in their original predictions. Before we officially stated Newton’s 3rd Law, I borrowed an idea from Mark Schober and had students play with film canisters with magnets inside to test and refine their rule before the whole-class discussion.

Day 92: Board Meeting, Representing Free Fall, & 2 Truths and a Lie

February 6, 2019 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 2 Comments

AP Physics 1: Pendulum Board Meeting

Students whiteboarded their results from yesterday’s pendulum lab. For mass and release angle, there were a couple of groups who sketched graphs that did not start at zero, which was great for having some discussion about why the scale of your graph matters. This was also the first graph students had that wasn’t quadratic or linear, so no groups linearized initially and we had some fantastic conversation about the intercept, which actually started in some groups while they were still prepping whiteboards. By the end of the hour, every group had linearized and was on-board with a square root relationship.

Physics: Representing Free Fall

Students used some questions I modified from Michael Lerner to represent a falling orange using tools from each model we’ve covered so far this year. By the end of the hour, students commenting that free fall and projectile motion really aren’t anything new, which was exactly the goal! Students were struggling to connect this activity to the graphs we discussed yesterday, so that will be something to work on tomorrow.

Chemistry Essentials: Periodic Table 2 Truths & a Lie

After discussing some of the trends in the periodic table, we did some whiteboarding to practice reading the periodic table and recognizing the trends. Since there isn’t a whole lot of depth to the questions I could ask at this point, each group prepped a whiteboard with two correct statements and one incorrect statement. Then, they traded whiteboards with another group who had to find and correct the wrong statement.

Day 87: Projectile Practical, Energy Problems, & Board Meeting

January 23, 2019 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 1 Comment

AP Physics 1: Projectile Practical

Students finished predicting where a marble rolled off a lab table will hit the floor. Once students have a success, I gave them a lighter marble and asked them to predict where it will land without taking any new measurements.

Physics: Energy Problems

Students worked on calculations using conservation of energy. This was a tougher leap than I expected given how easily students got the hang of setting up conservation of momentum problems from bar charts. I think a card sort similar to the one we did for momentum would have been a good stepping stone.

Chemistry Essentials: Board Meeting

Students had a board meeting with their results from yesterday’s lauric acid lab. I had students collect data for the acid both melting and freezing, which made for a good visual of how similar those processes are. Students also made some good connections to last week’s activity in Pivot Interactives. I think starting with the cleaner data helped students to see the patterns in their data and there was some great conversation about why everyone had the same temperatures on their flat sections today while different groups got different temperatures on their graphs last week.

lauric board.jpg

Day 85: Whiteboarding, Video Analysis, & Board Meeting

January 18, 2019 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics 1: Whiteboarding

Students whiteboarding yesterday’s problems. I focused on a consensus-building approach, where all groups whiteboarded the same problem, then we used the discussion to come to an agreement on what the answer should be, and why. Both my sections have a pretty good sense of class community, which made students pretty comfortable sharing work they weren’t sure about yet and building off each others’ ideas.

Physics: Video Analysis

We finally got out the computers to do some video analysis of a bouncy ball to figure out what interaction is dissipating the energy. I’ve never had much luck walking the whole class through the software, so I have a video analysis guide with lots of animated screenshots that I put on the class website. Students were able to get some nice graphs of the bouncy ball’s motion and connect them to our work from the past few days.

Chemistry Essentials: Board Meeting

Students whiteboarded their results from yesterday’s lab in Pivot Interactives. During the board meeting, students continued to share observations faster than I could write them down, which is a great problem to have in this course. It was also very clear to students that the temperature stays fairly constant during the freezing process. I’m hoping having had a board on these results will help students make sense of our lauric acid lab on Tuesday.

Day 84: Projectile Calcs, Bouncy Ball Diagrams, & Pivot Interactives Phase Changes

January 17, 2019February 4, 2019 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 2 Comments

AP Physics 1: Projectile Calcs

Students started working on some projectile motion calculations. We also took a few minutes to discuss a new clip from Mythbusters Jr. where an archer attempts to replicate Odysseus’ shot through a series of rings. Students head read the Odyssey in English and were excited to link what they’d read to some physics and Mythbusters and there was some good conceptual discussion about the trick.

Physics: Bouncy Ball Diagrams

We spent some more time whiteboarding diagrams in our efforts to figure out what interaction dissipates a bouncy ball’s energy. It was clear students were a little rusty on free-body diagrams and velocity vs. time graphs, but they were able to make sense of what the diagrams should look like and there was some good discussion along the way.

Chemistry Essentials: Pivot Interactives Phase Change

I am a part of the Pivot Interactive’s Chemistry Fellows program.

I usually introduce phase changes with a lab using lauric acid, but have found that while students notice their temperature doesn’t change during the lab, many of the students I see in Chemistry Essentials struggle enough with reading graphs that the small errors and uncertainty in their data makes it tough to pick out the big ideas. This time around, I decided to try starting with a version of the lab in Pivot Interactives. When students weren’t responsible for stirring, the data came out much cleaner. I also found students were much more willing to accept the temperature plateau as something real than I’ve seen in the past. This lead to some great questions about where the heat must be going when the temperature isn’t changing.

Day 83: Whiteboarding & Assessment

January 16, 2019 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics 1: Projectile Whiteboarding

We finally whiteboarded students’ results from Friday’s projectile motion activity using Pivot Interactives. We also made a lot of references to yesterday’s activity and how it fit with what we saw in the graphs. I always love this board meeting since things just click for students and projectile motion suddenly feels simple to them.

Physics: Bouncy Ball Whiteboarding

Students started whiteboarding the representations they’d sketched yesterday for a bouncing bouncy ball. We were only able to get through the energy bar charts today, but students started to make some connections that will help make more sense of the placed they struggled yesterday, like the v-t graphs.

Chemistry Essentials: Assessment

Students took their density retake and their gas laws quiz. It ended up taking the whole hour since we had shortened periods today. A lot of students told me they felt like they improved on density, which was the goal.

Day 82: Projectile Motion Maps, Bouncy Ball Energy, & Density Refresher

January 15, 2019 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 1 Comment

Today was another sub day.

AP Physics 1: Projectile Motion Maps

Students worked on an activity based on Dan Meyer’s “Will It Hit the Hoop?” where they analyze a strobe photo of a basketball. I used this activity in Physics last year, which helped students make good connections to motion maps. I’m hoping the same will happen for my AP students.

Physics: Bouncy Ball Energy

Students started working on my lab to determine what dissipates a bouncy ball’s energy. I got through the opening discussion in one section yesterday, but recorded a short video introducing the lab for the other. Last year, I put together a scaffolded worksheet for students to sketch an assortment of representations and highlight the differences between the competing explanations.

Chemistry Essentials: Density Refresher

The density assessment students took before break was rough, I think at least partly because it was one of the last class periods on the last day of classes. My co-teacher and I decided tomorrow’s assessment will include another shot at density along with gas laws. Today, my co-teacher went over some extra practice on density that students worked on yesterday.

Day 81: Assessment & Whiteboarding

January 14, 2019 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics 1: Assessment

Students took their energy assessment. When they finished, they worked on wrapping up their projectile motion work from Friday.

Physics: Energy Whiteboarding

Students whiteboarded their problems from Friday. Both classes were able to come to a consensus on what the answers should be and why.

Chemistry Essentials: Gas Laws Whiteboarding

We did a gallery walk to go over some gas law problems from last week. The numbers in the problems are pretty extreme to keep the math relatively simple, but that left room for students to be able to focus on what temperature and pressure mean at the particle level and to connect their conceptual understanding to the math they were doing. That’s a trade-off I’m okay with for now.

Day 80: Pivot Projectiles, TIPERs, and States of Matter

January 11, 2019January 14, 2019 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 2 Comments

The combined forces of a neck sprain and a cold got the best of me, and I ended up at home while my students worked with a sub.

AP Physics 1: Pivot Projectiles

I am as part of Pivot Interactive’s Chemistry Fellows program.

Students collected data in a Pivot Interactives video showing three views of a projectile to generate position vs. time graphs and velocity vs. time graph for the motion in each direction.

Physics: TIPERs

Students worked on some problems out of TIPERs using energy bar charts as a reasoning tool.

Chemistry Essentials: States of Matter

Students did a short reading out of the textbook to get an introduction to states of matter. My co-teacher also took advantage of how short the activity is to meet with each student about their grade so far.

Day 79: Projectiles, Graphing, & Gas Law Problems

January 10, 2019 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 1 Comment

AP Physics 1: Projectiles

Students worked through some questions I got from Michael Lerner to introduce projectiles by having students represent the motion of a falling object using key tools from each of the models we’ve covered so far this year. This day always makes me really happy I wait until the end of linear mechanics to do projectiles.

Physics: Graphing

Students worked on finishing up their data collection and graphing from yesterday’s kinetic energy lab. I was really excited about how many students recognized on their own that they would need to linearize this data; even groups that had data that looked fairly linear, which is common with this lab, realized their intercept would make more sense with a parabola than a straight line, which was awesome. January and February are always a tough time of year, and a clear reminder of how much my students have grown so far this year was just what I needed.

Chemistry Essentials: Gas Law Problems

Students worked on solving problems using the gas laws. First trimester, I switched from using the formulas to having students use proportions to solve the problems, which helped make the math more accessible. This trimester, I added a question where students had to determine whether the unknown quantity should increase or decrease based on their particle diagrams, which made a big difference for students when deciding whether to multiply or divide to get their answer.