Physical Science 20 - Jan 7

Today students started looking at wave properties with an activity that used slinkies.  We will continue this activity tomorrow.  Students who were absent today can use the following applet to do the activity.  It is called the wave properties activity and you received it with the handouts you picked up on Monday.

Click to Run

Physical Science 20 - Jan 6

Today we went over Homework 5.1.  Afterwards we started to learn about waves.  We learned about the concept of the medium as well as the different types of mechanical waves.  Transverse waves were discussed along with the terms used to describe those types of waves as well as longitudinal waves and terms associated with them.  We also learned about a measurement called the wavelength.  This was all covered on slides 123-132.  Tomorrow we will start examining wave properties with a hands-on activity.

Physics 30 - Jan 6

Today we went over the assignment from yesterday.  Then we started learning about the electric field.  Students watched the following video and then we did some demonstrations where we were able to visual the electric field.  Students started into the notes about electric fields which we will finish tomorrow.

Physical Science 20 - Jan 5

Today we started looking at waves by learning what causes as wave.  We started looking at vibrations and periodic motion.  This involved learning some new terms such as period and frequency.  Students learned how to calculate period and frequency and we went through a couple of examples.  We concluded the class by working on Homework 5.1 which I will go over tomorrow.  This was all covered on slides 110-122.  Tomorrow we start to look at waves and what they are.

Physics 30 - Jan 5

Today we finished off looking at Coulomb's Law by going through examples 4 and 5.  Students then had the rest of the class to work on Assignment 5.1.  We will go over this tomorrow and then continue on with looking at electric fields.

Physical Science 20 - Jan 4

Welcome Back everyone.  I hope you all had a relaxing break and are ready to make the push to finals.  We starting back by learning about the rest of the properties of light that we didn't learn before the break and then went into looking at how the particle model of light fits into those properties.  As it turns out, assuming that light is made up of tiny spheres doesn't really do an adequate job of explaining all of lights behaviours.  We will now turn our focus to the wave model.  Before we do that however we have to try to understand what waves are.  That is where we are headed for tomorrow.  Today we covered slides 95-109 in the Physics Notes powerpoint.  Tomorrow we are going to start looking at waves and wave properties.

Physics 30 - Jan 4

Welcome back from the break everyone.  Today we started our last unit on Electricity and Magnetism.  We began by looking at the force that exists between electric charges and learning how to calculate the amount of charge on an object.  This was covered on slides 1-10 of the new powerpoint called Unit 5 Notes found in the Unit 5 folder of the Physics 30 Class Notes link. Tomorrow we will finish a couple of examples and then students will get a chance to work on Assignment 5.1.