One section of Physics 10 had its second day today. We articulated what position was and did a second take of the buggy lab with measurements of position instead of distance. Another amazing board meeting happened by the end of class, along with some beginnings of realizations about how important units really are for communication. (“How could some of us have a slope of 19 and some 0.44? Those are TOO different. No car went that slowly!” The answer, of course, was whether the group measured position in cm or m. They figured it out on their own during the discussion.)
Now we have position-vs-time graphs. We know the slope tells us how fast something is going AND what direction it is going. We know people call that velocity. We know the intercept tells you where the car “started”. (And we will refine that soon enough.)
My other 11th/12th grade class this year is Electric Circuits. They also had their second day today, and they lit multiple bulbs with one battery, one wire, and lots of hands.
They also started trying to figure out what might be happening in the wires by bringing the wires near circuits. (We are working through the Modeling version of the CASTLE curriculum and are almost finished with Unit 1.)
O'Shea Physics 180 