It's Friday, I'm in Love

With trashy action flicks...Time for a Pitch Black/Chronicles of Riddick movie fest with some Mortal Kombat: Annihilation tossed in for good measure...

Honors Physics started a series of lab investigations concerning conservation of energy. The first examined energy changes in a tossed ball and demonstrated patterns of energy change between kinetic and gravitational potential energy. The second targets energy in simple harmonic motion and tracks kinetic and elastic potential energy conversions in a mass-spring system. We'll finish up the lab work on Monday, so the lab write up wont' be due until Tuesday. Also on Tuesday, we jump deeply into energy with a detailed look of the various forms and types.

Physics B discussed conservation of energy and used last week's lab unit as an example. Regardless of type of collision, total momentum before the interaction equals the total momentum after the interaction, but the same cannot be said for energy of motion (kinetic energy). We'll classify collisions based on their ability to conserve kinetic energy (and other factors) on Monday.

Physics F went over their homework questions/problems and were then given review work to start on in preparation for Wednesday's exam. We'll go over this information, do a general review of momentum and conduct one extra lab investigation before the test.

Physical Science reviewed the homework problems for Newton's 2^nd Law of Motion and weight before looking more closely at free-fall acceleration. We added in the force of air resistance, today and discussed its effects on falling objects. The concept of terminal velocity was introduced and explained and linked to the reason that, in the absence of a vacuum, more massive objects do hit the ground before less massive objects. We then began a look at projectile motion that we will continue on Tuesday. Monday finds students taking a short quiz on the math skills they've practiced so far for forces and then embarking on a lab investigation for air resistance.

Homework

Honors Physics: None
Physics B: p. 101 in Packet #14, 15, 28, 29
Physics F: Complete momentum review packet
Physical Science: Study for forces math quiz