Into the Weekend

Boy, can I tell its Friday…

Physical Science B had class time to work on a series of questions and problems dealing with velocity and acceleration. I was a bit surprised by the amount of whining over having to actually do work and by the reluctance to work independently on the assignment. Remember two things – this is high school and this is an honors course. You need to cultivate your own skills both through cooperation and independent work. Further, with the amount of trouble people had with the homework, you should be eager to get more practice working with the same type of problems. Learning is an opportunity, not a burden. We will go over the work on Tuesday. Monday is your chance to conduct the Velocity investigation and observe the motion of an accelerated object in detail.

Physical Science E reviewed how to draw and interpret position-time graphs and began a discussion of acceleration. We took time to draw together all pieces of the past few days to go deeper into the data from the Velocity lab investigation. On Monday, you will get a chance to work on some practice problems for velocity and acceleration before we move on to circular motion.

Honors Physics had the chance to work with non-perpendicular vectors today. Remember that when you add vectors to align them tail to tip. Getting your vector diagram correct at the onset of a problem is the key to success. Some people like to read the problem and make a rough sketch of the vectors before actually formalizing the diagram – charting out the story the problem is telling. Keep a close eye on direction of your vectors when calculating values; this is another potential problem area. Monday, we will go over these problems and begin discussing the motion of horizontally-launched projectiles. This will lead into Tuesday’s lab on projectile motion.

Physics F and G began their discussion of vectors with a study of the graphical method of analyzing vectors and the mathematical method for combining vectors. We will use vector operations often in this course, so take care to get sufficient practice now. Now is also a good time to refresh yourself on the trig functions of your calculator – they are going to get heavy use in this section. Monday, we will go over your vector work and look at how to take a resultant vector and break it into its components. This will be a necessary skill when working with 2-dimensional motion.

Homework

Honors Physics: Practice 3C and #29 of the Chapter Review
Physical Science B: Read lab sheet and complete worksheet packet by Tuesday
Physical Science E: Read 10.2 and complete the practice problems on page 328
Physics F and G: None