And What Will She Sound Like Tomorrow?

A general apology to all for the atrocious sound of my corn crake voice. Tomorrow, it will either be better or gone completely - either option will be beneficial to your ears.

Physical Science - you guys did great today! Asked good questions, didn't get flustered...nice job. Tomorrow, I want you to try and do the 2nd lab without jumping over steps in the procedure, though. I shouldn't get a "no" answer when I ask if you performed a step. Every group flubbed this a bit, so try checking off steps as your perform them. If you are doing something and the steps before it are not checked off, you are in the wrong place in the procedure. Notice today that the data table preceded the procedure. This is often the case. You fill in the data as you collect it and this is laid out in the methods.

Physics - took a look at the homework and people are all about on the same page. A few items left blank or with a "didn't understand" comment and this is ok for today, as we didn't go over things fully before you handed them in. Tomorrow, we will address the homework in more detail and make sure that I cover fully the areas that gave you particular bother. The goal is to finish off accuracy, precision, sigfigs, scientific notation and dimensional analysis before we do lab on Monday.

Honors Physics - We went through things at a bumpy pace today, so be sure to ask me to go over anything you might have missed. Take home ideas - refresh yourself with the metric system (SI units and prefixes) and the scientific method and be able to discuss the use of a model. Make sure you can differentiate between accuracy and precision. We'll finish up Chapter 1 early next week. Tomorrow, we will work on the lab the 9th graders started today. Just an introduction to the Vernier system to facilitate the remaining labs for the year. A note to follow up on the comments for the freshmen - following the directions is critical. Go stepwise and make sure you don't skip anything. The experiments, themselves, are simple. The data analysis is not as easy and this needs to be done with care. We'll get oriented as a group before I turn each lab group loose to work, so you can ask any preliminary questions that might have about the equipment or software.

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Driving home today, I got caught behind a Cadillac pickup truck. What a useless vehicle. Is the owner actually going to haul a load of mulch in that thing? I think not. Get a Cadillac and a separate beat-up truck. I don't care how rich you are, no one looks down on a venerable old truck (usually named something like Ol' Sally). What's next - a Maserati mini-van? That would be about as functional. Of course it couldn't take kids to soccer practice because that might get dirt on the seats...
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