Takin' Over the Hallway

Physics set up camp in the hallway today and conquered the art of Graph Matching. Ok, the conquest is not yet complete, but graph butt was kicked and more kickage is on deck for tomorrow. Seriously, physically modeling position/time and velocity/time graphs is a very good way to get a feel for what is actually happening when you are confronted with a random graph of motion. People were readily making the connection between slope and velocity, what horizontal graph sections meant for motion and the importance of direction and frame of referernce for describing motion. Tomorrow, we will complete the investigation and, hopefully, have time to discuss the lab questions (if not, that is our first item of business on Thursday).

Physical Science made good progress towards mastering dimensional analysis. If more practice is required, make time with me before or after school. I also have extra practice sheets on which you can work. Tomorrow's lab, centering on measurement, significant figures and scientific notation, will allow you to use a variety of tools to calculate the density of a variety of objects. Much of the procedure is at your discretion, so you should come with some preliminary ideas about what type of data to collect and how to affect its analysis.

Honors Physics - today's lecture took us through basic kinematics. Remember, kinematics targets motion, but not its causes. If all we want to know about is the features of an object's motion, kinematics and the associated equations are sufficient for the task. Tomorrow, we will apply these formulas to vertical motion and examine the idea of free fall. We will go over 2C-2E tomorrow if there are any questions about those problem sets. We are still on schedule for the test on Monday. When we start 2-dimensional motion, we will continue to use versions of these basic formulas, but further explore the vector nature of displacement, velocity and acceleration.