Crossing the Midline

Wednesdays - only good things come after Wednesdays...like the end of the week...

Honors Physics started their unit on motion today with an examination of the nature and importance of frame of reference when when reporting motion. Without a point of comparison, it is not possible to give rate or direction of motion to an object. Once we establish a frame of reference, we can then determine how much motion has occurred (distance/displacement) and rate of motion (speed/velocity). The length and rate measurements could be scalar or vector, depending on the nature of our question and we have to determine whether we want distance/speed or displacement/velocity. It makes a difference which type of value we choose and we'll work with both scalar and vector quantities as the year goes forth.

Introductory Physics reviewed and had more practice with unit conversion. It is critical that you can convert both base-10 and non-base-10 units and work with both single and multi-step conversions because they will crop up frequently in problem-solving. If you need more practice, see me for help or additional items to work. Class ended with an overview of people's work on the Making Cents of Math lab. Take note of any annotations that were added to your lab sheet or lab write up and make sure to heed those recommendations when you conduct your next investigation.

Physics A took time to review their graphing and dimensional analysis homework and then moved on to a review for Friday's exam. As I said in class, expect a graphing item to be one of the short-answer problems and I wouldn't be surprised if some unit conversion and dimensional analysis cropped up, as well. Physics B conducted their Making Cents of Math investigation (Physics A's work tomorrow) and will have their exam review tomorrow. Don't forget to follow the syllabus guidelines for your lab write-up and to hand in both your completed lab sheet and your write up tomorrow in class.