TGIF

Friday rocks the house in a big way. The week was busy, but productive so I am sure everyone is ready for some R&R.

Physical Science completed their discussion of Chapter 1 with a review of scientific notation, accuracy and precision and significant figures. Make sure you can easily and quickly work with scientific notation on your calculator – that will be a big help during the year and on the MCAS. Also, even if the MCAS doesn’t directly deduct points if you don’t use or incorrectly use significant figures in your open response questions, you should get into the habit of using them in class. They are what real scientists use in their work and we will follow their example as much as possible. On Monday, we will tidy up any loose ends and I will answer any questions that you have about the material or Tuesday’s exam, so look over the chapter this weekend. On Wednesday, we move onto Motion!

Honors Physics completed the Ball Toss and Picket Fence Acceleration labs, which focused on the displacement, velocity and acceleration of objects in free fall. Lots of graphs to work with and interpret, which is common for motion studies. Data was good for “g,” but you might reflect on why it did not exactly give you the accepted 9.81 m/s2. We’ll discuss this in class on Monday and a review of section 2.3 in your book should give you the relevant information (hint: might be something you wish to put in your conclusion section of your lab synopsis). After the exam on Wednesday, we expand our model of motion to include 2-dimensional motion. The equations will be familiar, but how we use them will take some explanation. Fun will be had by all…

Physics completed their discussion of acceleration and kinematics. We will assume all acceleration values listed in problems represent constant acceleration so that you can use the kinematics formulas in the chapter to solve motion problems. On Monday, we will begin to explore vertical motion, with G block conducting their lab investigations and F Block discussing free-fall acceleration (the last section of this chapter). The same concepts that we’ve been reviewing will apply, with the exception that we generally always know acceleration ahead of time: acceleration due to gravity.

Homework

Physical Science B: 1.3 Section Review #5-7
Physical Science E: None
Honors Physics: Complete lab writeup
Physics F: 2.2 Section Review
Physics G: 2.2 Section Review. Read lab sheet for Monday.