Mo Physics Mo Problems

I'm going to keep the text of this blog short because the real action is in the videos in the Storify below! Today was our final collaboration with Angela Patterson, Kate Sommerville, and TEAM Togetherness of the year.  We decided to take the marble roller coaster project we do over the course of a week in AP Physics to study conservation of energy, rotational motion, and centripetal forces and bring it to the 4th graders.  In order to scale down a 5 day activity into a 2 hour time frame, we changed the ultimate goal just a bit. The design challenge for the teams was to build a marble coaster which had 3 obstacles. Obstacles could be hills, loops, jumps, or corkscrews.  Each team was made up of a group of 4th graders and 2 - 3 AP students serving as coaches. The role of the coaches was to Help complete the team’s vision and stay within the rules. Aid in construction and making the 4th graders' design ideas a reality. Let the 4th graders fail, help them unde

What happens when you put fast cars on HD video? Well it might not be quite the same, but this is pretty cool, too. I recently listened to a podcast in which Vicki Davis interviewed physics teacher Ben Owens. He exclaimed how the beginning units of physics instruction can get very rote and bogged down in mathematics becoming more about the numbers than about the process and what it means. Check out more on that great episode here. In my new term of AP Physics 1, there is a strong temptation to burn through the content in preparation for our AP test in May.  The content I would usually have 18 weeks to cover I only have 12 weeks to cover due to the scheduling of the AP testing. I may end up doing some more traditional forms of instruction as we get closer to the test, but I want the first experiences with physics content to be engaging ones.  I want students to be able to “get it” and be engaged.  Like any good story or song, you need a hook.   Luckily, I