Christmas is the Cruelest Season

When your story begins "I walked outside to find a pool of swirling gasoline beneath my car," and then it goes downhill from there - you know its going to be a long day. But, I do get to drive an expensively-rented Lincoln Town Car to school tomorrow. For once, my car will be somewhat on par with my students' rides...

Thursday was a busy day of reviewing for exams, discussing buoyancy and investigating heat conduction. Physics F and G reviewed for their exam, which was postponed until tomorrow. Remember what we outlined on Thursday to focus your studies. Honors Physics entered the fluid world with a look at Archimedes' Principle and how to determine the buoyant force acting on an object placed in a fluid. We'll finish going over the homework for that material tomorrow and start yapping about fluid pressure. Physics B had an overview of temperature and thermal expansion, which was related to the function of thermometers. Tomorrow, we talk about heat transfer, which will dovetail with Wednesday's lab about conduction and insulation.

Physical Science E conducted a lab looking at the insulating properties of materials. Four identical root beer bottles filled with hot water served as our test platform. One was naked, one wore a dry wool sock, one sported a dry cotton sock and the last was burdened with a wet cotton sock. The data clearly showed that to retain heat, one should neither be naked nor wet. In truth, if we had repeated the test with a wet wool sock, students would have found that the heat loss was no where near as bad as for the wet cotton sock. One of the positive things about wool is that it retains its heat-retention properties when wet. That is one reason that it is widely used for outdoor sporting socks. We will take time tomorrow to go over the MCAS practice questions that you worked on while waiting for the data collection to be completed for your lab.

Homework

Honors Physics A Block: Complete the 9.2 Section Review and Practice 9C
Physical Science B Block: Complete the Practice problems and Section Review on page 434
Physical Science E Block: Finish up the open response questions for the MCAS practice packet
Physics F and G: Study for exam