The Force is Strong

Physics A completed their Static and Kinetic Friction lab today and the write up is due on Friday. Hopefully, you took a look at the hints I put on the board for your Conclusion section and are going to take a sneak peek at the friction section of this chapter to help make meaning of your results. Tomorrow, we'll start on a discussion about the nature of forces.

Physics B used their work with the nature of forces to make an inroad into Newton's laws of motion. We tackled Newton's 1^st in class today and got some practice problem solving using N-1. Make sure you fully understand the implications of Newton's 1^st and that you can use the free-body diagrams you practiced yesterday to calculate the net force acting on an object. Tomorrow, we'll see how to calculate the acceleration that force produces in conjunction with another topic we discussed today - inertia. Keep in mind that inertia is measured by an object's mass and nothing else. That will help when we work with Newton's 2^nd law tomorrow.

Introductory Physics enjoyed their graded learning experience for Chapter 10 this afternoon. Tomorrow, we'll go over that exam and start to head deeper into the great Force Forest.

Honors Physics conducted a lab that had folks investigating both static and kinetic friction. We measured these values using both a force sensor and a motion detector, and used the information to calculate coefficients of friction. We'll discuss the lab tomorrow as part of our Chapter 4 review, but the write up is not due until Monday. Overall, tomorrow is set aside for exam preparation, so come with questions. As promised, I put together a few videos for working with that pesky net force-acceleration situation:

Easiest

In the Middle

Hardest