Making Those Firefighters Work

A fire drill is always good for getting out for fresh air and B Block was lucky enough to experience this. We made it through the basics of a line graph by period’s end, but did not get to discuss other forms of graphing. We’ll pick that up on Friday, along with scientific notation and significant figures. Tomorrow – lab day! E Block was able to complete their discussion of dimensional analysis and get some practice working conversion problems. We’ll review this again tomorrow before moving on to making measurements and presenting data. Looks like the tentative test date is going to get moved to next Tuesday, which I’m sure is not hardship for those involved.

Honors Physics examined the concept of velocity and how it differs from the similar concept of speed. Velocity, a vector, requires magnitude and direction. Speed, a scalar, only requires magnitude. Velocity and speed calculations for motion do not always give the same answer, as the homework problems bore out and it takes folks a bit to become comfortable with that idea. Graph analysis will be a major part of this unit and we started to look at position-time graphs today. Tomorrow, we discuss acceleration, the rate of change of velocity and begin to make use of the basic kinematics formulas. Friday’s lab will allow practice interpreting motion graphs and examining objects experiencing free-fall motion.

Physics started 1-dimensional motion today by defining motion and exploring the importance of a frame of reference. Displacement and distance were contrasted and, tomorrow, we’ll add speed and velocity to the picture. There are going to be a fair number of formulas in this chapter, but remember that you are not required to memorize them. They will be given to you on the exam and this will be the pattern for all exams in the course.

Homework

Honors Physics: Practice 2B, 2C and 2D. Only work #1-3 in each section.
Physical Science B: None
Physical Science E: Read over lab sheet for tomorrow’s activity
Physics F and G: Read 2.1 and answer the section review questions.