Snow Days!

Friday and Monday both were snow days, which gave folks an unexpected 4-day weekend. To get brains back in motion, Physics A and Honors Physics got to work on a problem involving a poor sap that falls off an icy roof. There was quite a lot involved, but groups rallied nicely to find out how far away from the house the person landed, with Honors Physics having to calculate impact velocity and force (and they didn't get to assume that the person came off the roof horizontally). Tomorrow, Physics A starts on an investigation on simple harmonic motion as demonstrated by pendulums and Honors Physics begins with a study of sound.

Physics B completed their pendulum lab investigations and we'll discuss this lab tomorrow in class. Then, you're going to get the same challenge as Physics A had today, so bring your thinking caps!

Intro Physics reviewed the properties of the phases of matter and then moved to phase changes and energy. Remember that phase changes are physical changes (no change in identity of the matter) and add the terms 'exothermic' and 'endothermic' to your vocabulary. Tomorrow, you'll be working on two labs centering on phase change, which will also be a nice review of the concept of energy and latent heats as applied to phase change.