Daily Archives: September 27, 2013

Week of September 30, 2013

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This Week in AP Physics
On Monday we will take a few minutes to complete and discuss the projectile motion lab, and then we will dive into Unit 3: Newtonian Mechanics – Newton’s Laws. We will develop and solve problems involving Newton’s First Law, mass, and static equilibrium on Monday and Tuesday before exploring our second topic, Newton’s Second Law. Guided reading #1 AND #2 will be due Tuesday to support this work. We will spend the rest of the week analyzing mechanics in light of these first two laws by generating and solving problems and by working on our first of two unit 3 labs, Lab 1 – Newton’s Second Law. Expect a quiz toward the late part of the week.

This Week in Physics
Depending on your section, you will either take the unit 1 test on Monday or Tuesday. The unit overview document is a good study guide. Be sure to use the podcasts to your best advantage and do lots of practice problems as you study. The day after your test you should take notes on the following podcasts from Unit 2: Motion in Two Dimensions:

We will analyze in class various examples of problems that involve vector operations and will then do assignment 1 together followed by a quiz the next day. As announced you should take notes on Podcast 5 – Introduction to Vector Resolution and Podcast 6 – Vector Resolution Sample Problem. We will then analyze more vector problems in class and do assignment 2 together followed by a quiz (perhaps next week.)

This Week in Astronomy
Having examined the stars at night, we turn our attention to the star of the daytime, our sun, as we begin Unit 2: The Ecliptic Motion of the Sun. We’ll start by analyzing data of the sun’s position in the sky over the course of the year and generate an explanation for how and why it moves the way it appears to move. After this activity and subsequent notes we will quiz. There is only one (relatively short) podcast for this brief unit, Unit 2 Podcast – The Ecliptic and its Implications, and minutes 1-189 of the podcast will help you study for this quiz. At some point during the week I will ask you to take notes on minutes 19-30 of the podcast as homework and will give you an open-notes quiz over this material on the day the notes are due. Then we will do a number of activities in which we analyze how the path of the sun changes annually at different latitudes. Next week we will wrap up this unit by looking at the relationship between the sun’s path and climate. We will take the test for this unit by the middle/end of next week.

Cool Science of the Week
REAL.LIFE.LIGHTSABERS.
(I am so freaking out…)