Monday, December 04, 2006

Was Mr. Schuetz speeding? - assignment

For this assignment, click on the link below to go to a website showing Mr. Schuetz getting an automatic speeding ticket in DC.
Your assignment is to use the information provided in the links to find Mr. Schuetz's speed to within 2 miles/hr. You must include the technique, the measurements, and the calculations.

http://www.yhspatriot.net/~aschuetz/subjects/kinematics/aztek_ticket/Schuetz_speeding.htm

Sunday, December 03, 2006

done with electricity, now on to motion!

Now that we are finished with the unit on electricity and magnetism, we are embarking on the study of motion (called kinematics) that will take us through to the spring.
This study will include lots of topics, including speed, acceleration, force, gravity, momentum, and more.
Many of the labs will include measuring time and distance, whether by hand or by computer assisted means.
We will emphasize the importance of measuring technique, calculation, and error analysis.

Our first few assignments:
Measure Hunt: Both in the classroom and at home, we are examining measurement and units.
Accuracy and Precision: Using a bullseye target we are looking at how data could be collected well or poorly, how the term "human error" is really a worthless thing for us to talk about.
When we discuss sources of error, we really only want to talk about the specific ways that our data was skewed. Is it random (some high, some low) or systematic (all high)?

We then move on to the bowling ball lab, our first lab to measure motion and start talking about "inertia" and "speed"