“Elastic vs. Inelastic” Blog Post

Explain the difference between elastic and inelastic collisions and describe one of each that you have seen in your daily life.

“Elastic Collisions” Blog Post

Which has greater momentum: a train at rest or a moving skateboard?  Explain why you picked the answer that you did.

“Work vs. Power” Blog Post

Explain (in your own words) the difference between work and power.  Give an example showing work done with a lot of power and then with a little power.

“Mass and Newton’s 1st Law” Blog Post

 Find three examples in your life that show the correlation between inertia and Newton’s 1st Law, and the amount of mass something has. For each example describe why it shows inertia, and how the amount of mass affects how it behaves.

“Inertia Investigation” Blog Post

Describe and explain 3 instances in your day where you saw inertia. Make at least one example where something continued to move, and one where it stayed still when other things moved.

“Mu - Friction” Blog Post

Today we learned how to calculate the Coefficient of Friction (mu). Explain why you think friction happens, and name another surface that you think would have an even bigger value of μ with your shoe.  Be sure to explain your choice in your blog post.

“Free Body Diagrams” Blog Post

Post or provide a link to a Free Body Diagram you found on line. First, describe what the object is and how it is moving.  Then NAME and DESCRIBE each of the forces that are shown on the diagram.  Make sure your picture is visible once published (or provide a link).

“Balanced and Unbalanced” Blog Post

Find an example of two free body diagrams, one that is balanced and one that is unbalanced.  For each, describe the forces that are on them and what makes them balanced or unbalanced.

“Vectors & Scalar” Blog Post

Explain the difference between vector and scalar and find an example of each that we did not cover in class (you can use the internet or pull from your own life)

“Four Forces” Blog Post

Describe each of the four types of forces in your own words.  For each one, give an example of it in your life

Before this is 1st Quarter...

“Acceleration” Blog Post

A sports car and a school bus are stopped at a traffic light.  Use your physics vocabulary words (correctly) to completely explain the differences AND similarities of the motion of these two vehicles as each goes from a stop to the speed limit of 30 mph.  Also describe the differences and similarities as they stop at the next red light.

“GUESS Method” Blog Post

List the 5 steps of the GUESS Method. On each step explain what you have to do in your own words.  Be sure to COMPLETELY describe that step!

“Distance vs. Time Graphs” Blog Post

Describe what we did in class today and explain why you think these graphs would be necessary in our science class.

“Distance vs. Displacement” Blog Post

Describe distance and displacement IN YOUR OWN WORDS (do not write the definition). Give at least one example of each that you noticed throughout your day!

"Barbie Bungee Data Estimates" Blog Post

Estimate what you think the drop distance would be for Barbie if you had.. 

10 rubber bands?

20 rubber bands?

30 rubber bands?

Explain how you estimated these drop distances.

“Metric Units” Blog Post

 Explain why you think we use metric in science class instead of english units.  Find/list at least 3 things in your home or your neighborhood that has metric units. 

"Estimating Distances" Blog Post

Estimate the length of the front of your house.  Write a short procedure of how you estimated this distance.  Explain if you think this estimate is reasonable or unreasonable and why.

"Reaction Time" Blog Post

Describe what reaction time is and explain three examples of reaction time in your own life. (Remember - EXPLAIN means that you need to go into detail and should have at least a sentence for each one!)

Don't Go Beyond This Post!

Everything before this were last year's homework posts...don't go past here!

“Elastic vs. Inelastic” Blog Post

Explain the difference between elastic and inelastic collisions and describe one of each that you have seen in your daily life.

“Elastic Collisions” Blog Post -

Which has greater momentum: a train at rest or a moving skateboard?  Explain why you picked the answer that you did.

"Phase Change" Blog Post

Describe a phase change you saw outside of class today.  DESCRIBE what you saw and EXPLAIN the physics behind it. Be sure to explain if heat energy added or removed, what phase the object changed from, what phase the object changed to, and what the name of that transition is called.

“Too Hot/Too Cold” Blog Post

DESCRIBE three things that heat up at different rates and EXPLAIN why you think they heat up at different rates.

Quarter 4 Starts Here!

Don't make up assignments before this!

“Doppler Radar” Blog Post

Research how doppler weather forecasts work.  Using what you know about the Doppler Effect and what you have learned online, write a summary of how waves are used to show what is happening in the weather.

“Interference” Blog Post

Explain the difference between constructive and destructive interference.  Give an example of each in your daily life. They don’t have to be waves - just anything that interferes and makes something larger or interferes and make something smaller.

“Standing Waves” Blog Post

DESCRIBE the lab that we did in class today and EXPLAIN what you learned about waves from it.

“No Effect” Blog Post

Today you learned that amplitude of a wave does not affect the speed a wave travels, and yesterday you learned that mass and release angle do not affect the period of a pendulum.  Describe something in your life that you *think* should affect something else, but actually doesn’t.  Why do you think it should affect if? How do you know (or how have you learned) that it doesn’t?

“Simple Harmonic Motion” Blog Post

Describe how you would know if something is an example of simple harmonic motion.  Give three examples of simple harmonic motion that you have seen in your day today.

"Electricity Generator" Blog Post

Which type of generator are you most interested in? Using the internet and the notes from today, explain why you chose that generator, why you find it interesting, how it works, and why it is one of the better forms of electricity generation.  Also describe one bad thing about this form of electricity generation and why you think that drawback is not really a problem.

“Appliances” Blog Post

Find three appliances at home and take/post pictures of the electrical sticker - or post the information on it!
Sample from my water heater:

V=120V, P=1000W

Sample from my Wii converter (this has a voltage/power in and a different voltage/power out):

This one converts energy (input) from : V=120V and P=53W

to (output): V=12V and I=3.7A

Circuit Kit Lab Assignment

First - You will not need the lab sheet you have been given until you reach #4 and it tells you to fill in the lab sheet!

Next - hold down the Command button and tap the space bar - type "circuit" in the spotlight and see if you already have the Circuit Construction Kit downloaded onto your computer.  If you do, you can skip the first step and just open the file you have!

Now - go to this link and start the lab!

“Circuit Diagram” Blog Post

Write a blog post exploring the idea of symbols.  Why do we use these symbols for our circuit diagrams?  What are some things that using symbols makes it so much easier (and why)?  What are some thing that using symbols makes it so much harder to do (and why)?

For extra homework credit - EXPLAIN something new that you think it would help you to use symbols for.

“Pretzel Circuit” Blog Post

Write a blog post COMPLETELY describing today’s activity.  In your post be sure to EXPLAIN what we did, and what each item (the students, the pretzel bag, the pretzels) represented in an electrical circuit.

“No Wires World” Blog Post

You live in a world where electricity doesn’t need to flow through wires to light things up or make things work.  Write a paragraph explaining what you would name this world, EXPLAIN one cool thing you could do with electricity without wires, and EXPLAIN one crazy or horrible thing that could happen with electricity floating everywhere.

"Electricity So Far" Blog Post

Write and complete the following sentences:

• Electricity is...
• So far I learned...
• Electricity is ---- because ----
• I'm still confused about...
• I'm getting better at ...
• I have a question about....

"Electric Vocabulary" Blog Post

Write a short paragraph summarizing what you know about electricity so far. Be sure to use at least 6 of your vocabulary words that we have gotten so far: conductor,  insulator,  positive,  attract,  proton,  electron,  neutron,  negative,  repel and static electricity.

“Van de Graff” Blog Post

Today we played with a Van de Graff Generator.  Describe what the generator did (what you saw) and why it did it (the physics behind it).  For an extra point, come up with something that you would like to test on the Van de Graff Generator and explain what you think it would do! (The best ones may get to test it!)

"Insulators & Conductors" Blog Post

Think about your day and describe one  conductor and one insulator that you came in contact with.  For each one explain how you know it was an insulator (or conductor) and how it is different from the other item.

3rd Quarter! Don't Go Past This Post....

“Electric Light” Blog Post

Write a blog post completely describe today’s Light the Bulb activity, then explain why you think the light bulb lit up. (How do you think the electricity works to light it up?)