Friday is a Fine Day

Friday comes at last…
Honors Physics continued their practice with projectile motion problems by working with a situation that we’ve not encountered – what happens when you have to determine launch angle? Using the skills we’ve already developed for solving projectile motion problems, this set adds a new skill and a new challenge. Folks appeared to be catching on pretty well and had worked through the first couple successfully. We will go over the problems on Monday and I will post the solutions key on the course website. The vote was for the exam to be on Wednesday, so Wednesday it is. We’ll do a full review on Tuesday, so make sure to have your questions prepared.

Physical Science B completed their discussion of friction and its types. People had a lot of good questions about friction and its effects on motion and good answers for the section review questions. The next chapter allows us to delve more deeply into forces and we’ll meet up with friction again…

Physical Science E conducted two lab investigations today – one centered around the effect of air resistance on the motion of objects and the other on frictional forces. Objects are impacted by multiple forces all the time – we have to figure out what is the net force to determine what happens to the object’s motion. In the case of air resistance and friction – they act in directions opposite that of the object’s motion. We have an applied force, that is generally considered to be positive, and a resistive force that is considered negative. The net force on the object is the sum of the two, usually meaning that the acceleration of the object will be reduced from what we would calculate using the applied force alone. Sometimes the applied force isn’t even enough to get the object started! Not until it overcomes the static friction will the object begin to move, which explains why you can push or pull on an object and it stays at rest until you give it a harder tug. We’ll discuss the lab on Monday and go into more detail about frictional forces.

Physics F discussed yesterday’s lab and put the lab into context with what we have been discussing about vectors. We then used the lab to springboard the discussion of projectile motion. We’ll concentrate mostly on horizontal projectiles, but will take a little time for an overview of projectiles launched at an angle. Physics G also started in on this discussion today, after reviewing Practice 3B. Physics F has until Wednesday to give me test corrections and Physics G has until Tuesday. If you choose to do them, don’t wait until the last minute and make sure to utilize all the resources that you have available to you.

Homework

Honors Physics: Projectiles worksheet
Physical Science B: None
Physical Science E: Complete lab write up
Physics F and G: None