Motion

Day 75: Projectile Whiteboarding, Pie Charts, & Gas Laws

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AP Physics: Projectile Whiteboarding

Around half of my students were on a field trip today. We did some mistakes whiteboarding with the problems from yesterday, followed by some practice writing good explanations for “explain your reasoning” problems using CER.

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Physics: Pie Charts

A lot of Physics students were also on the field trip, so my classes were pretty thin. After discussing yesterdays’ lab and introducing the “flavors” of energy, students worked on drawing energy pie charts. I usually skip this representation, but we decided to see if it helps with the struggles students have had this year with conceptual understanding.

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Chemistry Essentials: Gas Laws

We went over the results of yesterdays’ simulation to derive the gas laws. Just like last trimester, I’m introducing them as proportions, rather than equations, and am pleased with how that’s working so far. I skipped spending a day on temperature and particle movement this tri, but I ended up missing that a lot today.

Day 74: Projectiles, Energy Transfer, & Quantitative Gas Laws

/ Marta R. Stoeckel / 1 Comment

AP Physics: Projectiles

Students worked on some problems for projectile motion. I overheard a lot of students talking about the labs and demos from last week (which Brian Frank’s post on labs had me listening for!). They could use some more practice justifying answers with physics principles, along with lab results, but that will come.

Physics: Energy Transfer

I used a lab I got from Twitter (I wish I could remember who; if its you, I’m happy to give you credit!). To introduce energy, I had students measure the force and displacement required to pull a cart up ramps with different angles. Then, they sketched force vs. displacement graphs and found the areas.

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Chemistry Essentials: Quantitative Gas Laws

Students used PhET’s Gas Properties simulation to get quantitative relationships between temperature and pressure as well as volume and pressure. There were a lot of great observations about the movement of the particles and one student even pointed out the temperature skyrockets when you add gravity, which should feed nicely into tomorrows discussion.

Gas Laws Sim

Day 72: Projectiles, Forces Practical, & Qualitative Gas Laws

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AP Physics: Projectiles

We worked through some problems I got from Michael Lerner where students apply other models from this year so far to an object dropped straight down and I was pleased with the connections students were making. I also asked students to predict what should happen to the time if the object were heavier and if it were launched horizontally, and got some great discussion. We wrapped up by trying each and checking the results with slow-motion video.

 

Physics: Forces Practical

Students wrapped up the forces practical from yesterday. I scaffolded the practical more than usual by breaking it into small steps, asking students for each representation and several calculations along the way. Several students commented that was very helpful when they took another look at the problems from earlier this week.

Chemistry Essentials: Qualitative Gas Laws

I got out the syringes for students to make some qualitative observations about the ideal gas laws. The ice water baths didn’t produce much change for the groups I was able to talk to today. With this class, I’m spending more time redirecting students or dealing with groups damaging lab equipment than I am talking to students about chemistry, so I need to think about how to shift that. There is a para who is going to work on helping to keep students on task. I also need to remember the instructional coaches have offered to help manage things on lab days.

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Classroom Display

Earlier this week, I put up a “Scientists can be…” display inspired by Liz Mastalio. Its been a lot of fun listening to students react to it; some are looking for which ones they don’t know while others are clearly drawn to specific identities. My AP students have been telling me who they’d like to see up there, so I want to open the door for them to submit a poster with a label. That could help me get some identities I missed that matter to my students.

Maker:S,Date:2017-10-21,Ver:6,Lens:Kan03,Act:Lar02,E-ve

Day 71: Board Meeting, Practical, & Density Again

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AP Physics: Board Meeting

Students whiteboarded their graphs from yesterday’s video. Once I had my 2nd hour find a class average for the slopes of their vertical velocity vs. time graphs, everything fell beautifully into place and there were even gasps when one student sketched a free-body diagram. In my other hour, a lot of groups skipped the directions for making the v-t graph and tried to take shortcuts that didn’t work, so I had to step in a little more. This reinforces my thoughts yesterday that I should have spent some time discussing the midpoint method.

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Physics: Unbalanced Forces Practical

Students started a practical to predict the time it will take a cart to roll down a ramp given the cart’s mass and the ramp angle. For the first time, I had several students ask if I could just do a diagram or calculation for them, so I left the pen I usually carry at my desk and kept my hands in my pockets to avoid encouraging that.

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Chemistry Essentials: Density Misconceptions

Today, I have students blocks of the same material, but different volume, and asked them to determine whether volume affects density. A lot of groups had trouble funding the volume with a ruler, rather than later displacement, so I should have spent a little more time on a pre-lab discussion connecting yesterday’s volume measurements to today’s.

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Day 70: Projectiles, Forces Reintroduction, & Density

/ Marta R. Stoeckel / 1 Comment

AP Physics: Projectiles

Students did an activity on Pivot Interactives to watch the motion of a projectile from three different vantage points and produce position vs. time and velocity vs. time graphs. From what I saw, most groups got pretty good results. This was the first time students saw the midpoint method for finding slope of a curve, and I think I should have spent a little more time introducing that. We can have some discussion about it tomorrow.

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Physics: Forces Reintroduction

Especially because a lot of students really struggled with the forces assessment right before break, we started this week getting back into the swing with some problems similar to what we worked on right before break. Before break, I was also seeing more and more students getting off-task during time with their groups, so I spent some time sharing my observations and having some discussion about how that fits with what it takes to be successful in a class like this.

Chemistry Essentials: Does shape affect density?

I had students determine whether the shape of a block affects its density using a set of aluminum blocks with different shapes, but the same volume. Last tri, I’d asked students to predict the shape of the mass vs. volume graph, but it was tricky to collect class data and the graph was kind of boring since I didn’t have much variety of volumes. This approach got the same misconceptions out on the table, but gave more meaningful results.

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Day 52: UBFPM Practical, CAPM Problems, & Lewis Dot Beans

/ Marta R. Stoeckel / 1 Comment

AP Physics: UBFPM Practical

Students were tasked with finding the inertial mass of a lump of metal. While I left it open, students pretty quickly settled in to following the steps from their 2nd Law lab. In one of my classes, a lot of groups initially used the unknown mass to provide the force on their half-Atwoods setup, which has me thinking they were losing track of the significance of the measured quantities; I skipped over having them do an interaction diagram and free-body diagram on the original lab, which I’m betting would have helped.

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Physics: CAPM Problems

Students used whiteboards to revisit an earlier quiz on CAMP problems. I had them go through piece by piece, rotating who had the marker for each step. That seemed to help students feel a lot more confident on the problems. Tomorrow we’ll see if they can do them independently.

capm prob

Chemistry Essentials: Lewis Dot Beans

Yesterday, when we worked on formula writing, students were losing track of what the various numbers represented. One of the other chemistry teachers suggested I try Lewis dot structures with a manipulative, so today students used beans to check their answers to yesterday’s problems.

lewis dot beans

Day 51: Friction on Ramps, CAPM Card Sort, & Naming Compounds

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AP Physics: Is Friction Negligible?

Students sketched free-body diagrams and vector addition diagrams for a cart on a ramp with friction, then were tasked with determining whether friction is negligible using a set of graphs recorded in LoggerPro. There were lots of great conversations connecting the force representations to the motion ones.

friction on ramp grpahs

Physics: CAPM Card Sort
I want to revisit CAPM this week, so we started with Kelly O’Shea’s card sort. A lot of groups needed some nudging to differentiate between constant velocity and constant acceleration on the velocity-time and acceleration-time graphs, but that was no surprise. While students were bothered by the idea that there was no one right answer, they had some great conversations. I think it also helped that I assigned them to random groups, which interrupted some of the usual patterns.

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Chemistry Essentials: Naming Compounds

Students worked on going between formulas and names for compounds. A few groups asked if they could use the cards from Friday to help figure out how many of each atom a compound needs, and I happily got them out. I think a lot of students lost track of what is going on conceptually with the bonding, so I need to think about better ways to reinforce that.

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Day 44: Practical, Spring Force, & Vocab Review

/ Marta R. Stoeckel / 6 Comments

AP Physics: CAPM Practical

Students figured out where to start a buggy so that a marble rolling down a ramp would land in it. Some groups had some trouble translating their strategies for yesterday’s problems to this lab practical, which has been pretty common this year. However, once students got going, there was a lot of success!

Physics: Spring Force

Students worked through the spring force lab I’d previously done with my AP Physics classes. We used force sensors to stretch the spring instead of spring scales or hanging masses so that students could pick one of their springs to also stretch horizontally. From what I saw in notebooks, results are coming out pretty nicely.

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Chemistry Essentials: Vocab Review

This unit has had more vocabulary and factual knowledge than many of the others, so we took some time to review key terms and reinforce connections between the different ideas.

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Day 43: v-t Graphs, Board Meeting, & Chemical Change

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AP Physics: v-t Graphs

Students took their first stab at solving problems for objects with a constant acceleration using velocity vs. time graphs. Groups were consistently getting the problems down pretty quickly, so we did a gallery walk of solutions for these problems rather than a full whiteboarding session. My students with some calculus knowledge are getting genuinely excited about the connections between physics and calc, which is a lot of fun. I also had some students think week talking about how momentum vs. time graphs fit with what we’re doing now, which has me really excited to start the Newton’s 2nd Law lab next week.

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Physics: Board Meeting

Students whiteboarded the results of the force of gravity lab. The results were pretty good and I had some students speaking up who are usually quiet during whole-class discussions. I’m also seeing students get more confident finding the line of best fit and translating y=mx+b into “physics”.

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Chemistry Essentials: Chemical Change

Students did a lab observing several chemical reactions to recognize signs of chemical change. One of the reactions produced a precipitate, and it was interesting that a lot of students were not convinced the precipitate was a solid since it was a fairly fine powder.

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Day 42: Mistakes, Force of Gravity, & Periodic Trends

/ Marta R. Stoeckel / 1 Comment

AP Physics: Mistakes

Since my students are pretty confident on motion graphs, we went straight to mistakes whiteboarding with some stacks of motion graphs. Students were pretty successful at coming up with interesting mistakes. In addition, during the presentations there was a lot of joking around and students were very willing to own unintentional mistakes, which was great to see.

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Physics: Force of Gravity

Students collected data for a relationship between mass and the force of gravity. One of my classes was able to get their graphs and linear regressions done, and were more successful than I expected at “translating” their line of best fit into physics by adding units to the slope and intercept and replacing x and y with appropriate variables.

gravity lab

Chemistry Essentials: Periodic Trends

Today, I handed out periodic tables and students worked on marking them up based on some of the patterns and trends we’ve been talking about the past few days. Yesterday, several students noticed that the sodium card said it reacts strongly with water. Since many also recognized sodium is in table salt, they weren’t entirely convinced it would react with water, so I got out the pure sodium today to drop a piece into some water. I got a small flame during class, which really blew their minds.