April Fool's Day!

Physics conducted their tones/overtones lab today and the results were very good. Tomorrow's discussion of harmonics will give more context to the overtone idea and classify harmonics as a subset of overtones. We'll discuss why different instruments have characteristic sounds and also examine the concept of beats. Beats and beat frequency will be the focus of Monday's lab. Friday - review day. Tuesday - Exam.

Honors Physics ended their sound unit with an overview of harmonics and their role in determining sound quality and uniqueness of sound. We review tomorrow, conduct the beat/beat frequency lab on Friday, exam on Monday.

Physical Science had a discussion of reflection and color today, with a solid overview of types of mirrors and the images they form. Plane mirrors: virtual images, same size/distance and orientation as object. Diverging mirrors: virtual images and can magnify objects. Converging mirrors: real and virtual images (depending on object distance from mirror surface) with varying degrees of magnification. Students will explore these mirror types and their reflective properties in tomorrow's lab. Remember though - all mirrors are bound by the law of reflection (θ_I = θ_R). We also discussed color and contrasted color addition and color subtraction. Both work to give us the variety of colors we see, but accomplish it through different methods. After reflection, we'll sally forth into refraction and dispersion before ending our unit on light.

As today is April Fool's Day, here's a link to the best April Fool's hoaxes ever perpetrated:

Top 100 Hoaxes

The #1 hoax - The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest - is a classic. First broadcast by the BBC on April 1, 1957, the result was the same as for the the War of the Worlds hoax on October 30, 1938 - people actually believed it! Here's some footage- it is still used today to highlight the properties of "documentaries" that contribute to their believability and how those properties can be turned to less honorable purposes...