Week of September 2, 2013

Welcome to a short but terrific week! I’ve had a few people ask me about the playability of the podcasts on Mac computers. I’ve tested it out (and am, in fact, writing on a Mac right now :)), and everything is working. My suggestion is to check for updates if you’re having trouble. Please keep me posted. 🙂

This Week in Physics
We will conduct our first experiment, the Analysis of Uniform Motion Lab, early in the week. We will then spend time at the end of the week in the computer lab to learn how to write our lab reports. By Wednesday you should take notes on Podcast 4 – Slope of Position vs. Time Equals Velocity.

This Week in AP Physics
** Your lab report on the Uniform vs. Accelerated Motion experiment is due on Friday at the start of class. The Lab Report Writing Guide – AP Physics and Lab Report Rubric – AP Physics are your guides. Be sure to turn your report in as a hard copy on Friday and upload by Monday (next week’s Monday) to TurnItIn.com.
** On Monday and into Tuesday we will continue to practice interpreting graphs of the kinematic values as a function of time. A fun website to give you conceptual practice is Moving Man Website. (Be sure to click the “Charts” tab at the top to see the graphs.) After we’ve conquered these graph interpretation skills, we’ll examine the kinematic equations dealing with displacement, velocity, acceleration, and time and will work with some awesome physics problems. It’s a short week, but hopefully by the end of the week we will conduct our second lab, which deals with the Acceleration due to Gravity. Anticipate the unit test next week. 🙂

This Week in Astronomy
We will return to the planetarium to share what we’ve learned about our constellations and to do our final practice exercises with star mapping. Anticipate a quiz on Wednesday or Thursday over star mapping skills. Podcast 1 – Star Mapping will support your studying. Next we will examine how and why the sky changes throughout a day and will turn our attention to a prominent mapping line, the celestial equator. We will also begin to analyze changes to the sky as we travel north/south on the globe and will create sky sketches called meridian diagrams. Fun! 🙂

Cool Science of the Week
As the saying goes, “Men are from Mars; women are from Venus” …or are we all from Mars? An American chemist this week has posited that Earth did not have the chemicals necessary for life to begin here, and therefore life could only have come to Earth by hitchhiking on a meteor. This reminds me of last spring’s announcement by NASA that the Curiosity Rover found the building blocks for life on Mars. (Disclaimer: I’m not saying we’re all Martians. :))

Week of August 26, 2013

Welcome to another great school year! If you are new to my classes, please be sure to subscribe to the blog by entering your email along the right side of the webpage. Then be sure to check your inbox for an activation link. If you were in my classes last year and wish to unsubscribe, there is a link at the bottom of this email that will allow you to do so.

This Week in Physics
By Monday please take notes on Motion in One Dimension Podcast 1 – Distance v. Displacement and Motion in One Dimension Podcast 2 – Displacement & Direction. We will work through that material and do some practice problems followed by a quiz on Tuesday or Wednesday. For Tuesday please take notes on Motion in One Dimension Podcast 3 – Speed vs. Velocity to prepare you for the Analysis of Uniform Motion Lab that we will be conducting mid-week. Following the lab we will go over the Lab Report Writing Guide and Lab Report Rubric as well as procedures for writing using Google Drive and TurnItIn.com. It is possible we may get to Motion in One Dimension Podcast 4, but it is only due if announced in class.

This Week in AP Physics
This week we will explore Unit 1: Newtonian Mechanics – Kinematics in One Dimension and will conduct our first experiment, Lab 1 – Uniform vs. Accelerated Motion. By Monday be sure to take notes on Motion in Two Dimensions Podcast 1 – Vectors vs. Scalars to give you basic background information. We will cover these topics more in depth throughout the semester.

This Week in Astronomy
We will explore the techniques of sky mapping in order to locate stars and constellations using our Star Map – North and South Declination. This means we will get to spend a significant amount of time in the planetarium! Alright! Expect a quiz as we wind down that topic; Celestial Sphere Podcast 1 – Star Mapping will support your studying. Toward the end of the week we will examine the diurnal (daily) apparent motion of the stars and begin to work in how the sky changes when we travel north-south on the globe.

Cool Science of the Week
Are we making animals smarter? Check out the article As Humans Change Landscape, Brains of Some Animals Change, Too to find out if one day we might talk to Mickey!