Understanding Physics Concepts
Posted by Janice on January 5, 2009 in Science, Teacher Voices
Students from three of Kim Sciarrone’s physics classes at Ingraham High School created videos to demonstrate their understanding of various physics concepts. This process allows students to take charge of their own learning and share their projects with others. Kim divided her classes into groups who then collected the data, filmed their demonstration and used the library computer lab to produce their final projects.
The 10th Grade Honors Physics class studied velocity and the idea of plus and minus when used with direction. Kim’s fourth period physics class used soccer and basket balls with Logger Pro to analyze horizontal and vertical motion. And finally, the IB Physics class determined the mass of a hover puck. A force plate was attached to the Lab Quest hand held device to determine impulse. Determining the impulse allowed students to solve for the mass of the puck.
The students used three pieces of technology to help them with their demonstrations. The science technology pieces were Logger Pro and the hand held Lab Quest, both from Vernier. Logger Pro allows students to collect data and video from experiments. The video is synchronized with the data collection making it easy for students to make predictions and demonstrate science concepts. The hand held Lab Quest device can be used as a computer interface or in the field for conducting experiments. FLIP cameras were used for the student video portion of the projects because they are small and easy to edit both from the software provided from the camera or in MovieMaker2.
Here are some representative videos from the projects:
10th grade: Positive and Negative velocity
baucho-and-raymond
haley-and-brennas-swell-presentation