Archive for the ‘Lab & Classroom Equipment’ Category
A Modeling Approach to Mechanical Advantage
Posted by: Scott on: April 24, 2012
Let me start by saying that I have yet to take a course in teaching through modeling. I want to, and I will. I never loved my pulley lab. I was never pleased with the learning, the kids seem to focus on trying to set up the pulleys and not on what is happening. Two [...]
Homemade Hooke’s Law Device
Posted by: Scott on: March 5, 2012
I like saving money for my school. Nothing against Carolina Biological, we’ve been really pleased with their equipment and service, but sometimes their stuff is just way overpriced. Their Hooke’s Law Device is $35 each. I made a similar set of devices for a couple of dollars using what we already had in the lab [...]
Follow-on Toy Popper Lab
Posted by: Scott on: March 1, 2012
Last year I gave all my physics classes the first toy popper problem (1st popper lab). I learned my lesson and only the honors group gets the inquiry version of the lab. This year I followed on to that lab with a second popper lab when we got to impulse. The non-honors class doesn’t get [...]
Good Intentions, Bad Lab
Posted by: Scott on: February 28, 2012
A couple of weeks ago we did a lab straight from the textbook. (Here is the Lab Instructions, typed up and put it into my words.) I’d been looking for a good Conservation of Energy Lab. I wanted to use the Vernier devices, but there wasn’t anything in their book that I liked. Rather than [...]
Robotics is Now Robotics & Engineering
Posted by: Scott on: September 5, 2011
Last year, the course was actually called Robotics and Astronomy, or Robostronomy for short. The intent was half-year of each. The result was more like three weeks of astronomy and robotics all year-long. Don’t get me wrong, I love astronomy. It’s just, well, Robots took over the Earth. Between the great things we could do [...]
Coffee Shop Physics
Posted by: Scott on: August 29, 2011
I would like to have coffee available for the students while they work, but my administration frowns on kids having food and drink in the classroom. But that is not where this story is going. Last year, one of my students came into class second or third period and said how much he loves coming [...]
Homemade Hooked Masses
Posted by: Scott on: May 26, 2011
I needed unknown masses for my Torque Lab. Good thing I don’t seem to ever throw anything away. I’ve been taking Prevacid for about a year now, it comes in a really handy sized bottle. (Now let me just say, if you have a chronic indigestion problem and you don’t try this or one of [...]
Toy Popper Lab – Update #1
Posted by: Scott on: January 5, 2011
We finished the lab today. I gave the kids two days to do it. Most of them figured out the initial velocity by the end of the first day. The start of the second day, I put two hints on the board. For question 2, I put up t=d/Vagv. For question 3, I told them [...]
Party Popper Lab
Posted by: Scott on: December 31, 2010
Am I the only teacher that spent half of the holiday break grading papers and working on lessons? Here is a lab my students will be working on when they come back from break on Monday. I figure it will give me a day or two to settle in without having to get up front [...]
Measuring the Coefficient of Friction – Updated
Posted by: Scott on: December 22, 2010
This is a follow up on the first pass of a lab I created about a year ago. You can see my first post here. This year we purchased a whole pile of new technology including the LabQuest from Vernier. If you have these in your lab, you know just how cool they are. The [...]
Free Astronomy Resources
Posted by: Scott on: March 30, 2010
At NSTA I met an earth science/astronomy teacher named Jay. In one of the lectures Jay attended on the Chandra, there were playing cards showing the steps of stellar evolution. He told me the cards are free and I found the site and ordered a set of them for my classroom today. One way the [...]
Conservation of Energy Lab
Posted by: Scott on: March 11, 2010
I quite literally pulled this together one morning after realizing I didn’t have a lab in this chapter. The kids have been struggling with the concept of Conservation of Energy. Putting up the Physlet for the skate park really helped. I like that you can display a bar graph of the energy in the system [...]
Lego Robots – Part 2
Posted by: Scott on: February 21, 2010
I wanted to build this robot, but we just didn’t get that far. I’ll save it for my summer program at the community college. After midterm exams, we came back to the robots for a final two weeks of programming. First up was the touch sensor. I liked this lesson, it added switch blocks (if-then) [...]
The Best and Worst Reasons for Using an Interactive White Board
Posted by: Scott on: February 19, 2010
I got a Promethean Board in my classroom this year. It’s a love-hate kind of thing. I thought maybe I would use it for everything, kind of like nailing in a screw. I used it, some days more than others, some weeks only a few minutes a day. My experience is only with this one [...]
Lego Robots – Part 1
Posted by: Scott on: January 19, 2010
HELP: If anyone has good NXT plans or links for a walking robot or a dog, or any other plans I can use for this class, I would really appreciate an email. Use the Contact Me or post a comment. Thanks. A quick update and then a bit of a review. We purchased 12 Lego [...]
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