AP Physics: Board Meeting

Students whiteboarded their results from yesterday’s lab. I forgot to remind my 2nd hour to zero their force sensors yesterday, which made for a good opportunity to talk about what the intercept means. They were initially bothered by the units on the slope of their graph, but the units of N/(m/s²) became really valuable when we made a “for every” statement about the slope; interestingly, a lot of students phrased their “for every” statement in terms of how the acceleration changes for every 1 N of force, even though that required inverting their slope. I thought about having students plot acceleration on the vertical axis, especially since the College Board’s formula sheet gives a = F/m, but I think the mass pops out more nicely when force is on the vertical. I may still flip the axes next year since acceleration on the vertical would fit better with how they talk about the graph.

Physics: Whiteboarding

Students whiteboarded their answers to last Friday’s problems. We spent a long time on a problem about using a log to hold a book against the wall, and there was a lot of great discussion about what that force should be and why, as well as whether there should be any horizontal forces. I think a lot of students don’t see that discussion as productive, but I heard a lot of great physics talk.

Chemistry Essentials: Atomic Models

Students shared the information on the atomic models they looked at yesterday. They were surprised by the gap between Democritus and Dalton and were also very interested in the personal stories. I tend to skip past those, since most of the people the state standards call for are white guys, but its probably worth having some reminders in my class that science is done by people who live in a particular place at a particular time. Maybe next time, I’ll do a little more background research to try to come up with some other names, especially women and people of color.

AP Physics: 2nd Law Lab

Students started collecting data for a relationship between force and acceleration. A few students took out their formula sheet to get a preview of what the equation should be; it was interesting to listen to their conversation on what they expected the graph to look like and whether their data was consistent with the equation they expect to need.

Physics: Board Meeting

Students whiteboarded their results for the spring lab. They are getting better at “translating” lines of best fit into physics by selecting meaningful variables and putting units on slope and intercept. It was also clear in the discussion that students are gradually making more connections between the graphs and the reality of the lab. When discussing the intercepts, there was a great moment where a student speculated whether gravity could be contributing to the intercept, which lead nicely into comparing the vertical and horizontal springs.

Chemistry Essentials: Atomic Models

Students worked on a jigsaw for the history of atomic models. This was a nice opportunity to talk about what we mean by a model in science since we are looking at how models of the atom evolved over time. I asked groups to name some of the evidence used to support each atomic model, and students had a lot of trouble with that. I think part of the issue is a lot of students are still shaky on what makes something evidence and part of it is there’s a lot of background knowledge required to make sense of the evidence used in many of the atomic models.