Week Over, Man...Week Over

Honors Physics walked through the chapters covering light, reflection and refraction in preparation for Monday’s exam. Certain sections aren’t relevant for the exam and those were highlighted and areas known to give students trouble were identified. After Monday’s exam, we jump into electricity!

Physical Science B discussed series circuits in terms of function and mathematical analysis. Series circuits are easy to wire, but you do have do worry that if one item in the circuit ceases to function, the others will also since the electrons have to pass through every device in order to return to the power source. We then spent a good bit of time practicing how to calculate the equivalent resistance, current, total voltage and voltage drop across each device in a circuit. Remember that for a series circuit, the current through each device is identical, but the voltage drop depends upon the device’s individual resistance. We’ll review this on Monday and then turn attention to parallel circuits.

Physical Science E conducted a lab investigation on Ohm’s law. Students built simple series circuits with resistors or bulbs and switches to see how ohmic (the resistors) and non-ohmic (the light bulb) demonstrated Ohm’s Law. For the resistors, the graph of voltage versus current was a very nice straight line, for which the slope of the line was the resistance stamped on the resistor. For the light bulb, the graph was curved, indicating that the relationship between voltage and current was not linear and did not follow the predictions of Ohm’s Law. Monday, we’ll discuss the lab in more detail and delve further into series and parallel circuits.

Physics F and G began preparing for their exam, which we decided to reschedule to next Tuesday. F Block began by going over yesterday’s lab and highlighting the patterns of image formation by the converging and diverging lenses. Then, in both sections, students worked on a review sheet that targeted the math of this unit, specifically, the thin-lens/mirror equation, magnification formula and Snell’s Law. On Monday, we’ll go over the review worksheet you were given today and address any last-minute questions/problems. On Wednesday – electricity!

Homework

Honors Physics A: Study for exam
Physical Science B: None
Physical Science E: Complete lab write up
Physics F and G: Complete review worksheet