Happy Valentine’s Day! This is a good time to celebrate your loves of physics and astronomy! 🙂

This Week in AP Physics
We will finish debriefing assignment one on Monday and will then take a quiz over temperature and heat on Tuesday, which ironically will be cold. We will explore the ideal gas law and the kinetic theory of an ideal gas on Monday, and homework 2 will be due on Tuesday followed by a quiz on Wednesday. We will spend the rest of the week on the First Law of Thermodynamics and will explore various processes using Pressure v. Volume graphs both conceptually and in lab. Animations and weblinks on our unit 9 webpage will help you through these concepts. As a reminder, your lab report on our Bernoulli’s equation lab is due at the start of class on Tuesday, and it must be uploaded to TurnItIn.com by 3:00 on that day.

This Week in Physics
Third period class: On Monday your assignment 3 is due at the start of class, and we will take a quiz over elastic, inelastic, and totally inelastic collisions on Tuesday. Sixth period class: We will work on assignment 3 in class on Monday, so don’t do it for homework. Your quiz will be on Wednesday. For Tuesday (3rd period) or Wednesday (6th period) you should take notes on the remaining podcasts for this unit. We will explore these as we look at the impulse-momentum theorem in class and do assignment 4. We  may test this unit by the end of the week. Remember that your lab report for the Conservation of Momentum Lab is due on Thursday at the start of class and should be uploaded to TurnItIn.com by 3:00 on Friday.

This Week in Astronomy
On Monday we will examine the E-S-W sky and south declination stars as we use meridian diagrams to place the celestial equator at different latitudes. Then we will journey back into the planetarium to turn our attention to the northern sky. We will transpose the northern sky onto our meridian diagrams to create a full picture of the celestial sphere at different latitudes. Expect a quiz over this on Wednesday or Thursday. Podcast 2 – Celestial Equator and Celestial North Pole and Celestial Sphere Podcast 3 – Circumpolar Stars will help you study. By the end of the week we’ll look at annual changes in the appearance of our night sky.

Cool Science of the Week
Talking cars? Redefining what it means to be a smart car, the US government announced this week approval of new technology that would enable cars to interact with each other wirelessly in order to alert drivers to hazards.