Yay Summer!!!

Have a great summer everyone!  To my physics 30 students, see you all at graduation and good luck in the future.  To my physical science 20 students, have a great summer and see you all in the fall for Physics 30!!

Physical Science 20 - June 14

Today students wrote their quizzes on waves and the universal wave equation.  After that, we went over the homework from yesterday, Homework 5.6.  I then started into the final lesson of the semester.  Students began to learn what happens when 2 waves interfere in higher dimensions.  This sets us up into figuring out how light would behave.  Tomorrow we will finish this up and wrap up the course.

Physical Science 20 - June 13

Today in class we looked at how waves behave in two dimensions.  I introduced some important terms like wavefronts and rays and then we examined some properties.  We learned what happens with waves when the reflect off of a barrier.  After that we examined some more properties of two dimensional waves.  We spent some time learning how waves refract and how they diffract.  This was all covered on slides 168 - 186.  Students were assigned Homework 5.6 and asked to have that completed for tomorrow.  Tomorrow we will learn about how these waves interfere with each other.  Reminder that tomorrow is your wave quiz on vibrations, superpositioning and the universal wave equation.

Physical Science 20 - June 8

Today we learned about standing waves and how they are formed.  These are waves that appear to be standing still and are caused by interference between an incident wave and a reflected wave.  The terms nodes and antinodes were introduced and we looked at some formulas that show the relationship between the distance between adjacent nodes and the wavelength, as well as the length of the medium and the wavelength.  Students were to work on Homework 5.4 from yesterday and have that done for tomorrow.  Homework 5.5 deals with standing waves and students will need to have this completed for Friday. The notes today were from slides 159-167.

Physics 30 - June 8

Today we finished up the course by looking at the magnetic forces acting on an electric current running in a wire.  These forces are experienced by the wire because the wire produces its own internal magnetic field which is then interacting with the external magnetic field.  This was covered on slides 51-58 in the powerpoint.  Assignment 5.5 was assigned at the end of the period and students will get some more time tomorrow to work on it. 

Physics 30 - June 7

Today in class we learned how the magnetic field causes charges to move in a circular path and undergo circular motion.  This was then applied to a type of technology called mass spectroscopy.  This was all covered on slides 42-50 in the powerpoint.  Assignment 5.4 was given at the end of the class.  Tomorrow we will look at the final lesson, how magnetic fields affect charges flowing in a wire.

Physical Science 20 - June 6

Today in class we started looking at the wave property of interference.  This involved learning about the principle of superposition and what a resultant wave looks like.  We learned a technique for drawing a resultant wave and just finished an example before the bell went.  This was all covered on slides 141-158.  Homework 5.4 was assigned at the end of class and students will get some time tomorrow to work on it.  

Physics 30 - June 6

Today we looked at how to calculate the magnetic force and how to determine the direction of the force using the right hand rule. This was covered on slides 34-41 in the unit 5 notes powerpoint. Students had some time to work on Assignment 5.3 today, which we will take up tomorrow. Tomorrow we will look at how the magnetic force causes charges to undergo circular motion and some technology that has been developed to utilize this fact.

Physics 30 - Lab 5.1 Simulation - Charges and Fields

Click to Run

Physical Science 20 - June 2

Sorry I haven't posted in a while again.  Things are catching up to me at the end of the year and I have been neglecting the website. Earlier this week, students began looking at wave properties with an activity that used slinkies. THis was on a handout called the wave properties activity and you received it with the handouts you picked up on last week. 

Students who were absent during this activity can use this handout so work through the activity.  Go to this website http://surendranath.tripod.com/Applets.html and click on the link for HTML5 Animations.  Follow through the handout and answer the questions using the simulations on that website.

Yesterday we learned about the universal wave equation.  This equation applies to all waves and is pretty simple to use.  The notes we took today we covered on slides 135-140.  Students were assigned Homework 5.2 and Assignment 5.1 today.  We will take up Homework 5.2 tomorrow and Assignment 5.1 will be handed in tomorrow.  Tomorrow we will look at the interference of waves.