Gotta Love Those Short Weeks

Next week will be the true test of inner strength - we have to suffer through five full days of school. Eat your Wheaties...

Physics sections spent time looking at measurements and unit conversion. We use the metric system exclusively in this course, as is appropriate for any science course, and you will become very familiar with the units and measurements represented in the SI system. Don't forget the importance of units and never take them for granted. Units document the identity of information in a problem, they label values reported as answers to questions, they can be very useful in helping establish a method for solving a problem and can be used to self check an answer when a problem is completed. I'll harp on units all year long and will deduct points on tests if units are not used when reporting answers. We took time to look at SI prefixes for announcing large and small measurements and established that there are only three that you have to commit to memory: milli (10^-3), centi (10^-2) and kilo (10³). The rest would be given to you if you needed them for problem solving. Since information is often given in units that must be converted before a problem can be worked, we took time to go over methods of unit conversion. This will be a frequently-practiced skill in this course, so make sure you are very efficient in converting your units. A little mention was made of accuracy and precision for measurements, but we'll hit that in more detail on Monday.

Introductory Physics ran a lab that introduced folks to the workings of the Vernier probeware system. We'll use this system extensively for our lab component of the course and the investigation conducted today, which centered on the relationship between penny weight and quantity, was a good way to explore the equipment and see how the LoggerPro software handled data collection and presentation. We reviewed the necessary components for the lab write up and we'll take a look at people's work on Monday.

Honors Physics worked through the scope of physics and its subdisciplines, the use of the scientific method and models and the value of thought experiments in conducting research. Time was also taken to look over the metric system and review the basics of unit conversion - a skill that you will employ over and over again in problem solving. On Monday, we'll hit the concept of precision vs. accuracy and the use of significant figures in reporting results.