ACTIVITIES & PICTURES

Fourth Marking Period

Crash Test Project: Students must protect an egg in a crash by building a safe car with limited materials

Third Marking Period

Design Your Own Rollercoaster: Students will design their own sections of a large rollercoaster on paper. Students will have to calculate the speed of the coaster within their section at two points.
Energy Activities: Students will use Conservation of Energy to solve various problems with Hotwheels and elastic toys.
Radiation Mythbuster: In Comic Life, students must create a comic that explodes one of the myths of radiation that persist among average people on the street.

Second Marking Period

Long Term Project: Seismac Experiment

Students must propose an experiment using Seismac, a program which tracks the acceleration of the macbook, using its built-in motion sensors.

Build a Stable Alien Contest

Given some clay, students must build a small alien that cannot be tipped over easily. (Alien base-size will be limited to half of a 3"x5" card

Build Your Own Spinny Ride

Given materials, students must build a spinning ride for LEGO people that will mount on an old record player. Students will calculate the centripetal acceleration of the riders.

Hit the Target!

Using the data from their TPL activities, students must hit a mark on the floor (within the error they previously calculated).

Long Term Project #2: Physics Moment in Comic Life®

Students will use Comic Life to illustrate an everyday event and explain the physics of what happened.

TPL Experiments

Students will perform projectile motion calculations on data obtained from Toy Projectile Launchers.

TPL#1: Horizontally Shot. Knowing how high up the TPL is and how far it shoots, students can calculate how fast the TPL shoots the projectile.
TPL#2: Vertical Shot. Knowing how much time the projectile takes to come back down, students can calculate how fast the TPL shoots, and how hight the projectile went.
TPL#3: Angled Shot. Students will try various angles to see what angles gives the best range for their TPL. (It most likely is not 45 degrees!)

Free Fall vs a Real Fall

After calculating out how long it would take an object to free fall down one of the school stairwells, Students will then measure how long real objects take to fall to see how close real objects come to free fall.

Acceleration and Fnet of the Plunger-Cart

Using the Labpro Motion Sensor, students obtain a graph of the motion of the plunger-cart. On the graph, students must locate the portion that represents the time when the plunger was coming out, and then obtain the acceleration from the graph. From the acceleration and the mass of the cart, students can then calculate the net force.

Hotwheels® Acceleration Activity

Armed with only a timer and a meterstick, students will be able to calculate maximum velocity, acceleration, deceleration, and a time they didn't measure for a Hotwheels® car on a ramp. With the car's mass, students will then be able to calculate the net forces that caused the accelerations.

First Marking Period

Checking Up on Friction with the Labpros

Using Vernier Labpros with force sensors, students will try to measure both static and kinetic friction.

1st Combined Classes Physics Project: The Water Bottle Rocket Challenge

Given only a limited budget for file folders, stickies, string, and plastic bags, students will attempt to make a launched 12 or 20 oz water bottle stay up in the air as long as possible. Here are the results

Long Term Project: Attendance Projections

Students will formulate a hypothesis about attendance at this high school and check it based on data from past years.

Measure the Coefficient of Friction of Your Shoes

Students will measure the force of friction for their shoes on various surfaces, and then will calculate the coefficient of friction.
Excel file for data and calculations.

Pendulum Experiment

Students first form hypotheses about which parameters affect the period of a pendulum. Student groups then take data to determine if varying their parameter affected the period of the pendulum. It is critically important for students to be able to distinguish natural variation from changes caused by their manipulation of the parameters.

Measurement Activity

Students will measure some things around the room to get an idea of how to handle measurements and accuracy.

Fair Dice or Foul?

After figuring out the profile of ideal fair dice, students must acquire enough data to determine if real dice are fair or foul.