Staring at 2-D Motion

Physics A and B enjoyed demonstrating their mastery of the Chapter 2 material and will be entering the arena of 2-dimensional motion tomorrow in class. Honors Physics is already there and taking up the topic of horizontally-launched projectiles. The lab we conducted yesterday allowed people to get a look at the situation in real life and we added in more theory and problem-solving practice today. As you work your homework problems, remember that the x- and y-components of the motion are independent, but can be used to help examine attributes of the other. For instance, we usually are able to find time by evaluating the y-direction motion and that time can be transported to teh x-direction motion to find overall displacement. We'll expand our work with projectile motion tomorrow with a look at projectiles launched at an angle. They're a little more tricky...

Introductory Physics had an intensive session on graphing motion. We worked through the preliminary questions for our upcoming lab to make sure that everyone is set for interpreting position/time and velocity/time graphs for both motion with constant velocity and accelerated motion. Tomorrow, you will have to act out motion graphs and try and match your motions to the descriptions provided by the computer. On Friday, we'll review graphing before moving into more math associated with motion.