Day 34: Board Meeting, CAPM Practical, & Freezing Acid

October 25, 2017 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics: Board Meeting

We had a board meeting to wrap up the buggy lab. A lot of students who are normally quiet in whole class discussions spoke up today, which was great. In addition, there were some interesting observations that don’t always come up, like the student who commented the intercept did not depend on the slope. At the end of the hour, I also asked groups to whiteboard a CER for what the momentum vs. time graph should look like and, while we didn’t have a chance to discuss the boards, groups consistently were on the right track and not only connected the buggy lab to the definition of momentum, but to Newton’s 1st Law by discussing whether they could identify unbalanced forces on the buggy.

Physics: CAPM Practical

Students started working on a constant acceleration lab practical where they try to get a marble rolling down a ramp to land in a cup attached to a moving buggy. Some groups got a starting position for the marble while others got a starting position for the buggy. A lot of groups had trouble focusing on individual pieces of the task; tomorrow, I may take a few minutes to talk through the major steps students need to take. I’m also seeing students continue to struggle with confidence; they are nailing the problems, but just don’t believe that they get it, which makes it difficult to approach a challenging lab practical.

Chemistry Essentials: Freezing Acid

We discussed the results of yesterday’s lab. At the end of the hour yesterday, a lot of students didn’t seem convinced that temperature stays constant during a phase change, partly because they were focusing on their data tables and saw very small temperature variations. Today, I projected a graph from one of the groups for the discussion, and students saw much more clearly that the temperature is pretty constant. When students graph in Desmos, I usually allow one group member to make a graph as long as everyone sketches it (I don’t have a good way for students to print), but I think that’s making it too easy for most of the group to just glance at the graph so I need to work on ways to get students looking closer. I usually have a handout for labs in this course, so I’ll probably add some questions to prompt students to look carefully at their group’s graph to the next lab to see if that helps.

Day 32: Whiteboarding Galore

October 23, 2017October 23, 2017 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

Between having a sub on Wednesday and no school on Thursday or Friday, today was all about getting my classes back on track.

AP Physics: Conservation of Momentum Problems

Students whiteboarded the conservation of momentum problems from last Tuesday. Many of the problems require students to shift between thinking about the system as a whole and thinking about individual objects, and interaction diagrams (or system schema) proved to be incredibly powerful tools. The first year I used the Modeling Instruction curriculum, I didn’t quite get them and, as a result, my students never really saw the value, but my students and I are now huge fans.

Physics: Constant Acceleration Problems

On Wednesday, I left my students some problems that included several that started with graphs they’d already sketched and annotated. My students admitted that they made very little progress on Wednesday, partly because they got confused and shut down. This has been pretty common with my students this year, so we spent some time discussing alternative strategies for when they are stuck. Afterward, students whiteboarded the problems for a gallery walk. They are making good progress on connecting the features of the graph to the physical meaning it represents.

Chemistry Essentials: Phase Change Bar Charts

On Wednesday, students watched a short video lecture where I talked about the results of Tuesday’s phase change lab and introduced energy bar charts. While students got nice graphs from the lab, they were confused by the video lecture, so we spent most of the hour discussing it. It turns out the main issue is we haven’t spent much time on what the particles are doing during a phase change, so they weren’t willing to accept that explanation for the constant temperature in the lab without some additional convincing. I fired up a PhET simulation, which seemed to fill in some of the necessary gaps and allowed students to take a much more successful second shot at Wednesday’s bar chart problems.

Day 30: Problems, Annotating Graphs, & Boiling Ice

October 17, 2017 / Marta R. Stoeckel / 1 Comment

AP Physics: Problems

Students worked on some conservation of momentum problems. When students asked for help, I could tell pretty quickly who had sketched interaction diagrams. Especially now that I’m embedding center of mass, they have become an incredibly powerful tool. I also demonstrated exploding carts on a balanced track and was pleased at how easily students used the center of mass of the system to explain why it stayed balanced, even when the carts had different masses.

Physics: Annotating Graphs

Students whiteboarded their solutions to yesterday’s problems. I’m pleased to see a lot of students starting to make sense of the physical meaning of the graphs. I was surprised by some students who struggled to differentiate between initial velocity and maximum velocity, but I think they were able to clear up their confusion by the end of the hour.

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Chemistry Essentials: Boiling Ice

Students recorded temperatures as ice melted and eventually boiled. A lot of students where quick to say their results didn’t make sense when they saw minimal temperature changes during the phase changes, which was great.

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Day 29: Conservation of Momentum, Annotating Graphs, & Temperature vs. Heat

October 16, 2017 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics: Conservation of Momentum

We had a board meeting on last week’s conservation of momentum lab. As part of their whiteboards, I asked students to write a CER on whether their results made sense and encouraged them to use Newton’s Laws in their thinking. The 1st Law was a much more popular approach than the 3rd Law, but I was pleased at the connections were making.

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Physics: Annotating Graphs

Students started working on some problems to annotate velocity vs. time graphs and write equations for the area. I think this is helping some of my students to make more connections to what the graph actually represents, which will be an important stepping stone to solving problems. I also added some problems that just ask students to sketch and annotate a v-t graph from the kind of written description that would start a problem.

phys anno

Chemistry Essentials: Temperature vs. Heat

We took some notes on heat and temperature, then I asked students to predict whether there would be a larger temperature change when I added a small amount of boiling water or a large amount of warm water to a large beaker of room temperature water. Students seemed to wrap their heads around the difference and were able to explain why the warm water produced a bigger temperature change after the demo.

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Day 28: Conservation of Momentum, Mistakes Game, & Measurement

October 13, 2017October 13, 2017 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics: Collisions

After their quiz, students wrapped up the data collection on the collisions lab. Things went very smoothly, and a lot of groups have already commented on the pattern in their momentums. This is one of the times I love having quantitative uncertainty in the course, because students are independently deciding whether their momentums are close or effectively equal.

Physics: Mistakes Game

Students played the mistakes game with stacks of kinematic graphs. In class discussions, I’ve been struggling to get students to speak up and it is usually one or two students who do most of the talking after lots of long silences. Today, one of those students asked a question about the a vs. t graph, a member of the group presenting said, without any shame or fear, “We don’t really understand those graphs, so we just drew something.” All of the sudden, the whole class was animated and students who are normally quiet, even in small groups, were jumping in with fantastic questions. It was a fantastic way to end the week with that class.

Chemistry Essentials: Measurement

When I gave some notes on temperature scales yesterday, I had a student ask whether Kelvin is a more accurate scale than Fahrenheit and several others questioned it when I said 98.6 rounds to 100. I’m really excited about the thinking about measurement this shows, so I decided to lean in and do a Modeling Instruction measurement lab I’d skipped during the first unit. I had students measure the lab tables with popsicle sticks, gradually adding marks to make them more accurate. Next time, I think I will have them measure a bigger mix of objects, including some shorter than their tool.

Day 26: CoM Board Meeting, Breaking Down Problems, & Gas Laws

October 11, 2017October 11, 2017 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics: Center of Mass Board Meeting

We had a board meeting to discuss the results of the video analysis from the last few days. I asked students to write a CER for whether the forces on each system of pucks were balanced or unbalanced. This lead nicely into some conversation about what exactly we mean by the two -puck system. I ended up wishing students had more experience interpreting position vs. time graphs prior to this discussion; we’ve mostly worked with velocity vs. time graphs so far, and the various uncertainties piled up to make it look like the velocity was changing. The position vs. time graphs were much more convincing, but students weren’t as likely to look at those.

Afterwards, we played with the coupled carts from Kaar, Pollack, Lerner, and Engles’ The Physics Teacher article. The graphs were very satisfying.

Top: v vs. t for each cart, Bottom: p vs. t for system

Physics: Breaking Down Problems

On the last quiz, a lot of students really struggled to interpret the problems, so we spent some time today on how to break down a physics problem. As we discussed how to approach a problem, we took time for students to apply each step to the problems on the most recent quiz.

Chemistry Essentials: Gas Laws

We used the results of yesterday’s simulation to develop the gas laws. I’ve found a lot of my students really struggle with algebra, so, rather than developing equations, we came up with statements using proportional reasoning which students then applied to some problems. Some of my students who really struggled to manipulate the density equation were very successful with today’s gas laws problems, so I think this approach was a success.

Day 25: Center of Mass, Board Meeting, & Gas Laws

October 10, 2017October 11, 2017 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics: Center of Mass

Students continued yesterday’s video analysis, based on the article by Taylor Kaar, Linda Pollack, Michael Lerner, and Robert Engles in The Physics Teacher. Today, students analyzed the motion of four hover disks linked into a square from several different perspectives. They were a little bothered that it was tricky to spot the center of the square, but I like that we’ll be able to have a conversation about whether there has to be any mass at the center of mass.

Physics: Board Meeting

Students whiteboarded their results from the video analysis the last few days. Framing this around a CER with a more specific question than usual had the desired effect and I saw students keeping much more complete records than usual. Students are continuing to struggle with recognizing the physical meaning of features on the graph, so I need to keep giving students opportunities to work on that.

Chemistry Essentials: Gas Laws Simulation

Students used the PhET Gas Properties simulation to take quantitative data for the ideal gas laws. I think the class would have benefited from a little more discussion prior to using the simulation to set up what we were measuring and why, rather than just giving them an assignment in Google Classroom that told them what to measure. However, students were very successful in recognizing the quantitative relationships I wanted them to see.

Day 23: Elevators, Board Meeting, & Pressure

October 5, 2017October 11, 2017 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics: Elevators

I took some time today to introduce students to the CER framework. I showed them a force vs. time graph I made by riding the elevator with a mass hanging on a force sensor, then asked them to determine whether I was riding the elevator up or down. We haven’t done much with unbalanced forces yet, but they were pretty successful determining which direction I rode it.

Physics: Board Meeting

Students whiteboarded sketches of their graphs from yesterday. Its been taking longer and longer for groups to prepare whiteboards, so I think I will try setting a time on the SMARTBoard to try and speed things up. I also found a lot of groups were missing information we’d discussed recording prior to the lab yesterday, so I think we need to revisit lab notebook practices. The discussion was very abbreviated, so we only got a chance to discuss a little about the position vs. time graphs, but students were able to recognize the key ideas. On Monday, we’ll talk about the v-t graphs and look at some variations.

Chemistry Essentials: Pressure

To introduce pressure, students watched a balloon in a vacuum chamber, then whiteboarded what they thought was happening. Students were pretty successful at coming up with useful ideas to explain what they saw and inventing the idea of pressure.

Afterward, we boiled water in the vacuum chamber. We ran out of time to whiteboard it, but, on a whim, I got out my thermal camera and recorded a video to show the water stays cool.

Day 22: 3rd Law, Video Physics, & Thermal Expansion

October 4, 2017October 11, 2017 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics: 3rd Law

Students predicted which cart would experience a larger force for several different collisions, then we got out the force sensors and hoop springs to find out. In one of my classes, the computer was acting up, so we relied on the hoop springs and slow motion video. Fortunately, students found the video very convincing and even described watching the hoop springs compress as satisfying.

Physics: Video Physics

We started constant acceleration today. Students used photogates with a cart on a ramp during the first unit, so I decided to have students analyze hover disks on a ramp using Video Physics. I’m hoping that some of the features, like seeing the points in the video, will help students connect the representations we’re using to their physical meaning.

Chemistry Essentials: Thermal Expansion

I did a few demos of thermal expansion, and had students complete particle diagrams of each one. Students seem to be getting the big ideas, and I’m seeing students naturally improving how they represent key elements of their particle diagrams as time goes on. One student called me on falling into pretty teacher-centered habits during the whiteboard discussions; I have a tendency to talk to much the first time I teach a lesson, and this is my first time through Chemistry Essentials A, so that’s happening a lot. I need to spend a little more time during my lesson planning making sure I clarify the goal of each discussion and planning out some open-ended questions so I can give students more of the reigns.

Day 21: Lab Practical, More Problems, & States of Matter

October 3, 2017October 11, 2017 / Marta R. Stoeckel / Leave a comment

AP Physics: Lab Practical

Students worked on a balanced forces lab practical to determine an unknown mass given the tensions supporting it. I just made one set-up, and it was interesting to see that in one class, each group wanted to take their own measurements, while the other class wanted to just have one person take the measurements and record them on the whiteboard. The hour that took measurements as a whole class actually took longer to get everyone the data, but had a lot more conversation about what they needed.

Physics: More Problems

I’ve got enough students struggling with constant velocity that we took a day to do a Modeling worksheet that I usually skip. Talking to students, there were several groups who thought the area of the velocity vs. time graph only gave displacement in special cases. I’m also seeing a lot of evidence that students are losing track of the physical meaning of the graphs and their connections with the math. For example, when writing an expression based on a graph, a lot of students are using units and variables from the dowel lab, which tells me they know a procedure to turn y=mx+b into “physics”, but don’t have a conceptual understanding of what they are doing. These challenges have been a recurring theme in physics this year; we’re starting constant acceleration tomorrow, and I think I want to revamp the lab a bit to try and prevent some of these issues.

Chemistry Essentials: States of Matter

Students melted ice into steam and made observations and drew particle diagrams along the way. This led nicely into the idea that as the temperature increases, the particles are moving more. Students also made some nice connections to yesterdays’ demo with food coloring in water.

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