September 27, 2012 at 9:11 pm
So today, the last group of students finished our experiments on Galileo. The question we explored was the Law of Falling Bodies (objects that are falling continuously accelerate and the distance traveled depends on the square of the time) and whether or not the acceleration of a falling object depends on mass. Some groups dropped […]
September 22, 2012 at 9:51 pm
It was a rather sad and pathetic Talk Like a Pirate Day at BUA this year. The freshmen actually thought if they “talked” like a Pirate it would garner respect. No, respect (and house points) takes effort. If these freshmen had any chutzpa, this is what BUA would have looked like last week. […]
September 22, 2012 at 9:14 pm
I was going to dive into vectors next, but rumor has it I might be getting a touch table from Templeman Automation the first week of October, so I decided to hold off until after Camp Wing. After Monday’s exam, we will be exploring the forces and accelerating motion. We will finish our adventures with […]
September 22, 2012 at 9:06 pm
In the past week we explored the motion of accelerating carts down ramps, and what the position, velocity, and acceleration graphs for such a cart looks like. We used a variety of instruments to measure the motion of the carts from photogates to ultrasonic motion sensors to image analysis. We produced graphs of the motion […]
September 13, 2012 at 9:54 pm
We had some great verbal discussion about velocity today. What I thought were straight-forward homework questions turned out to present some deep conceptual misunderstandings. We explored the definitions of displacement, velocity, and what the average in average velocity really means. We began to play with carts accelerating down ramps. Some parents wanted to know more […]
September 12, 2012 at 9:18 pm
Leslie Schneider, the program manager for InterLACE, stopped by to observe our physics classes today. I asked the students to give some feedback on InterLACE and contrast it with what they have seen in traditional ‘lecture’ style science classes. The students overall seemed quite pleased with this teaching style. When we asked them what was […]
September 10, 2012 at 7:38 pm
Today we programmed LEGO Mindstorm robots with LabView and designed an experiment to measure the speed of the robot. As a note to parents, it is important for students to take the content learning seriously. Many students were unprepared for today’s class. I might even suggest taking notes on the text readings, videos, or blog […]
September 8, 2012 at 10:03 pm
We didn’t get as far as I would have liked, but we had a lot of fun this week. As we are a bit behind my aspirations I will be giving an off-day for homework early in the week to play catch up. So check out the revised HW syllabus. Lessons of the week. We […]
September 6, 2012 at 8:25 pm
Today we explored the ideas of net force, statics, equilibrium and normal force.We started by drawing free body diagrams of a hamster at rest on a table top. From there we examined a hamster at rest on an inclined plane. Thinking about an object at rest against a vertical surface we discussed a horizontal normal […]
September 6, 2012 at 8:06 pm
Before a recap on today’s class, I have to mention a link for Ms. Glenn’s brother. Ms Glenn went on the Vomit Comet ride with me last summer and she decided to make some cool air rockets! So today we tested inertia. We had lots of great demonstrations. In the format of InterLACE, either before […]
