AP Physics 1: Newton’s 2nd Law
Students used a modified half-atwoods to find a relationship between force and acceleration. The quality of the results varied a lot. I’ve been talking to the AP Chemistry teacher, and we think part of what’s going on is students aren’t often asked to use their data in meaningful ways before they get to physics, so it doesn’t make sense to take the time and attention to collect data carefully. I need to put some thought into how to help students place value on good data collection and build the skills required to collect good data.
After developing Newton’s 2nd Law, we spent some time combining the new equation with vector addition diagrams. Students are starting to buy in to the diagrams as useful thinking tools, which is always a lot of fun to see.
Physics: Free-Body Diagrams
Students have been working on Newton’s 1st Law and drawing free-body diagrams. We have some problems that often lead to great discussion with mistakes whiteboarding, but I’ve been struggling to get students in one of my hours to speak up during whole-class discussions. To help with that, I tried doing a short gallery walk prior to any of the whiteboard presentations this week. Once the whiteboards were ready, I had students visit each board with their group and make notes on their worksheet about potential mistakes they saw or questions they had. During the whole-class discussion, there was a lot less silence and we heard from some students who don’t often speak up, which was exactly what I was hoping for. I think it also helped that I shared those goals with students before we started. When a student joked those goals aren’t going to happen, I assured her I’m very stubborn and am convinced the class can get there.
AP Physics 1: Board Meeting
We had a board meeting for yesterday’s lab on Newton’s 2nd Law. Overall, students got very nice results and were very successful at making sense of what they saw.
This group added some notation to their graph to find the units on their slope
Students used an elastic string to tie a cart to a force sensor in order to find a relationship between the cart’s change in velocity and the area of the force vs. time graph. I’ve tried this lab a few times without great results, so spent a lot more time on the pre-lab than I had in the past and its looking like results will come out fairly nice.
Chemistry Essentials: Particle Diagrams
Students looked at the change in mass as they spread out a piece of steel wool and started drawing particle diagrams. My co-teacher and I agreed we want to ramp up the graph interpretation in the course, so we made a histogram of the class results and spent a fair amount of time discussing them. Students had some great observations about the graph.
AP Physics 1: Newton’s 2nd Law
Students worked on collecting data for a relationship between force and acceleration. It was a lot of fun to see students able to just dive right in to a lab like this; it was a good reminder of the growth students have made so far this year.
Physics: Momentum Intro
Students worked on a lab my colleague came up to introduce momentum. Students caught a cart at the bottom of the ramp, then came up with as many ways as they could to make it tougher to catch the cart, similar to the chalk smashing analogy used in the Physics Union Mathematics curriculum to introduce energy.
Chemistry Essentials: Mystery Tubes
This trimester, I’m re-teaching the first half of the course to a brand-new group of students. We started today by getting out the mystery tubes. There was a lot of great conversation, both in small groups and in the whole-class, which was a lot of fun, especially since we really struggled to get that in the class last trimester. I’m really excited for this group of students.
AP Physics 1: Whiteboarding
Students whiteboarded some constant acceleration problems for a gallery walk. These problems are coming very easily to most of my students, which is great to see.
Physics: Second Law Lab
Students collected data for a paradigm lab on Newton’s 2nd Law. Some students were a little thrown off by recording values from a graph in a data table, then making a new graph from the data table, but that’s fairly common.
Chemistry Essentials: Bohr Model Whiteboarding
We whiteboarded and discussed some key information from the periodic table and Bohr model for several different elements. Students lit up at the end when I had them leave off the name and the number of protons, then have another group try to figure out which element they’d answered the rest of the questions for.
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.
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.
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.
AP Physics: Energy Predictions
Students whiteboarded drafts of their answer to which interaction dissipates a bouncy ball’s energy. One of the things I like about this activity is every group agreed the table is where most of the energy is dissipated, but there was a variety of evidence cited that gave some good opportunities for discussion. Afterward, I showed a thermal video of a weighted tennis ball and we played with the happy/sad balls and seismic accelerator.
Physics: More Problem Practice
Students got some additional practice with unbalanced forces in 2D. It was one more day than I think was truly necessary for their understanding, but confidence has been a big struggle this year and it seemed to help a lot of them feel like they can do the problems.
Chemistry Essentials: Mistakes Game
I did the mistakes game with yesterday’s problems, and it was very rocky. I think it wasn’t ideal timing to introduce whiteboarding since tomorrow is our last day before break and a lot of students are very restless. I’m also really struggling in Chemistry Essentials, more than when I’ve taught it in past years, to get students focused on chemistry during chemistry.
AP Physics: Video Analysis
Students continued working to determine whether a bouncy ball dissipates most of its energy from impact or from air resistance (I’ll have an article about this activity in the January issue of The Science Teacher). Today, students used LoggerPro to analyze the videos they made yesterday and collect evidence. There were a lot of great conversations about connections between energy and motion, which is exactly what I’m after with this activity. Most students had a draft of a CER about where the energy was dissipated by the time they left class.
Position vs. Time Graph
Velocity vs. Time Graph
Physics: Speed Dating
As part of my effort to focus on lowering the social stakes in my class, I had students do some whiteboard speed dating to go over yesterday’s goal-less problems. There were a lot of great conversations; the best part was how many students I heard asking “How do you know?”. My 1st hour in particular did a great job of finding and correcting mistakes in each others’ work. I also am continuing to talk about my pedagogical choices more than usual, which seems to be helping students go along with what I’m asking and hold each other accountable for participating. Particularly in my 1st
The units got fixed on the next rotation, but I forgot to snap a new photo
Chemistry Essentials: Density
We discussed the results of yesterday’s lab to get to a definition of density. I skipped doing a true board meeting because, with break looming, I was worried about time, but students didn’t have as solid a mental model of density as I would have liked when they were working on the worksheet. It was a good reminder that pedagogical shortcuts have their cost.
AP Physics: Missing Energy
Students started working on an activity to determine whether a bouncy ball mostly dissipates energy due to air resistance or due to the impact with a table (I’ll have an article on this activity in the January issue of The Science Teacher). Today, students worked on sketching LOL diagrams and velocity vs. time graphs for each explanation, which lead to some good conversations about the connections between energy and motion. Each group also recorded a video of a bouncy ball that they’ll analyze in LoggerPro tomorrow.
Putting textbooks to good use
Physics: Goal-Less Problems
Students worked on some goal-less problems for Newton’s 2nd Law in two dimensions. I was very explicit with my students that I use them to make it okay to start a problem without knowing where you are going. We also spent some time discussing key steps students should take (like deciding whether the forces are balanced or unbalanced, drawing and annotating diagrams, etc) which helped a lot of students see where to start.
Chemistry Essentials: Mass vs. Volume
Students worked on finding a relationship between the volume of water and its mass. I had students design their own procedure for the lab and I think they could have used more pre-lab discussion; I usually keep the pre-lab pretty short in favor of doing a lot of coaching lab groups, but the class is bigger than usual this year and I was spread pretty thin, which in turn fed some classroom management issues. I’ll need to keep that in mind for future labs.
AP Physics: Multiple Choice
Today was a quiz day. This tri, I’m making quizzes the last thing we do for the day to build in a natural time limit. Before the quiz, we used Plickers to go over some multiple choice questions that were tricky on the final exam. I had one class where scores on the final came up, and that seemed to put a damper on some of the conversations. I’ll have some conversation with them on Monday to reinforce that we are after everyone’s success.
Physics: Elevator Wrap-Up
I gave students some time to do a summary table from Casey Rutherford’s elevator situations. Afterward, they took their quiz on Newton’s 2nd Law.
Chemistry Essentials: Mystery Tubes
Today was a quiz day. About half of my students take their assessments elsewhere due to IEPs or 504s and most of them need the whole hour, but the students who stay in the room usually only need about half the period, so I’ve been doing nature of science activities once all the students in the room are done. Today, I pulled out the mystery tubes. Compared to last trimester, my current students were less interested and quicker to look for answers online. I think if I’m going to do it early in the trimester, I need to spend a little more time than I did today introducing it and brainstorming strategies.
AP Physics: LOL Diagrams
We did the mistakes game again today (which my AP students now think of as standard whiteboarding in physics) for some problems with conservation of energy calculations. To avoid getting bogged down in the algebra, where most of my students are pretty strong, I had them put their mistake in the LOL diagram or writing the conservation of energy equation. Most groups worked on an accurate solution before they made their mistake, and one group did a nice job of setting up an equation for a problem where 10% of a baseball’s energy is dissipated before it reaches the peak of its path.
Students whiteboarded their work on Casey Rutherford’s elevator situations worksheet. A lot of students struggled conceptually with the direction of the net force, but seemed to resolve that by the end of the hour. I’m trying to lower the social risk of whiteboarding to get more engagement, so I gave each problem to two different groups, then had them meet and come to a consensus on a solution. Afterward, students did a gallery walk of all the whiteboards. We also discussed a video I made of a balance on an elevator to reinforce the worksheet.
Chemistry Essentials: Volume
Students filled geometric solids with water to find a relationship between the volume and the amount of water they could hold. I need to put some thought into how I introduce the lab; in particular, I don’t think my students have much concept of why this relationship is worth looking at. I know I can make use of that as we move into density, but I’m not sure how to frame the lab so they see a purpose in it up front.