Physics 30 - April 29

Welcome to the last school day in April everyone.  Today in Physics 30 we finished looking at examples of projectile motion by going through example 3 in the notes.  Students then had the remainder of class to work Assignment 4.1.  On Monday we will be doing a lab on projectile motion.  Have a great weekend everyone.

Physical Science 20 - April 28

Today students learned about image characteristics and the different values that they can have.  This is an important concept moving forward in physics as we will be talking about images in many different contexts.  Students then learned about the laws that govern reflection as well as the different types of reflection. This was covered on slides 18-26 in the notes powerpoint.  Students are to have Lab 2.3 done for tomorrow to hand in as well as Homework 2.5.  Tomorrow we will start looking at curved mirrors.

Physical Science 20 - April 27

 Today in class we went over Homework 2.4 and then started to discover another property of light.  We started examining the property of reflection.  Students did Lab 2.3 on the reflection of light in a plane mirror.  Then we went over the analysis and conclusion to Lab 2.3 which is on the reflection of light.  Students who require help with the analysis can check out this handout.  It has on it all the labels that you need to analyze your lab.  Tomorrow we will continue with the analysis of this lab and then start to talk about the concept of the image.

Physics 30 - April 27

Today in class we went through a couple of examples on how to solve projectile motion problems.  This involved breaking the motion up into 2 parts -  the horizontal and vertical parts.  We went through examples 1 and 2 in the notes.  We didn't start example 3.  We will do that on Friday.  Remember that you have your Unit 3 exam tomorrow.

Physics 30 - April 26

Today we started Unit 4 on gravitational motion.  We will begin this examination by looking at motion of objects close to the surface of the Earth.  This type of motion is called projectile motion.  The key to solving problems involving projectiles is to break the motion up into 2 separate parts - a horizontal and vertical part.  Since the only force acting on a projectile after it is gravity, the only motion that is changing then is the vertical motion.  The horizontal motion is uniform motion and the vertical motion is accelerated.  We looked at a couple of demonstrations to display this concept.  We didn't have time however to do any examples.  There is a new powerpoint we are using called Unit 4 Notes found in the Unit 4 folder of the Physics 30 Course Notes link.  We simply went through slides 1-7 today.  Tomorrow we will start looking at examples of how to solve problems involving projectile motion.

Physical Science 20 - April 25

Today in class we went over Homework 2.2.  Afterwards, we learned about another property of light called the rectilinear propagation of light - this means that light travels in straight lines.  We learned about the magnification equation as well how a pinhole camera works.  We took some notes and one example covered on slides 9-16 in the powerpoint.  Students then had the remainder of class to work on Homework 2.4.  I will check this on Wednesday.  Tomorrow is your exam on heat.  Make sure to study all heat assignments as well as notes on kinetic molecular theory.

Physical Science 20 - April 22

Today we started our new unit on Physics and particularly light. We talked about the different properties of light and started looking at the speed of light in particular.  We learned that light travels very fast in a vacuum (300 million meters per second) and this makes calculating distances of very far objects easy.  These distances are called astronomical distances and we went over the definition of a parsec, a light year, and an astronomical unit.  We then looked at an example using these and students were assigned Homework 2.2. We will go over this assignment on Monday.

There is a new powerpoint that students can download to get the notes for this unit.  It is found in the Physical Science 20 link on the right and the notes are in the Physics folder called Physics Notes.  We went through slides 1-7 today.  Monday we will be looking at the rectilinear propagation of light.