School: The Return

Surprisingly, most folks were actually awake and aware today! Physics completed their discussion of mirrors and will, tomorrow, take on color and polarization. Then, it is on to refraction with a lab exploring how the nature of the medium affects the degree of refraction. Snell's Law will be investigated and tested for acrylic blocks.

Honors Physics completed their polarization lab data analysis and went over the final discussion questions for the reflection chapter. Tomorrow finds us engaged with an introduction to refraction, the refractive index and Snell's Law. The next lab activity will center on concave/convex lenses and image formation.

Physical Science conducted a lab investigation on the structure and function of batteries. By testing various electrode combinations, students found that (a)swapping the positive and negative connections for the same electrode pair kept the same magnitude of voltage but changed the sign of the voltage and (2) the combination of carbon and zinc gave the highest and most stable voltage reading. In class today, some groups said that their best electrode combination was iron and zinc, but looking over your data, it was clear that carbon/zinc was the winner. We'll discuss this bit of information in class tomorrow prior to our exploration of resistance and Ohm's Law.