Week of November 3, 2014

This will be a shorter week, as you do not have school on Tuesday, election day, while the teachers go through a training day. The exciting news is that for some of you, this is your first chance to vote! Enjoy the experience! 🙂

This Week in AP Physics
For Monday remember to identify which big ideas, enduring understandings, essential knowledge items, and learning objectives we have covered so far in this unit. There will be a very short timed quiz asking yes/no questions to see if you can correctly identify the learning goals we’ve been working on. On Monday we will design an experiment to explore the work done on an object in relation to the energy it gains. For Wednesday or Thursday (as announced) please do homework 1. We will take a quiz as announced over internal energy, work, and the work-energy theorem after we complete exploring homework 1. We’ll end the week by looking at the conservation of energy. Anticipate a test by the end of next week.

This Week in Physics
We will continue to explore friction by completing assignment 2 together in class followed by a quiz when announced. We will finish out the week with our friction lab, during which we will collect data related to kinetic and static friction in order to analyze their relationship to each other and to mass.

This Week in Astronomy
We will continue to examine the phases of the moon by through a variety of activities aimed at helping you analyze the relationship between the Earth-sun-moon alignments, phase of the moon, time of viewing, and location of the moon throughout the synodic lunar cycle. Following this we’ll explore the geology of the moon. We may be ready to take the moon unit test by the end of this week. If not, we’ll text next week. Finally, please remember to work on your Unit 2 – Outdoor Lab. This lab requires you to take multiple observations at the same time of day for multiple days. Be sure to start it right away, since you’ll need to find five sunny days. Because this is Cleveland, we’ll need some time. This lab is therefore due on November 17.

Cool Science of the Week
Check out this video in which two guys manage to explain the four fundamental forces of the universe in an entertaining way.