Friday's Activities

This past Friday, we did multiple activities involving sound, frequency, and resonance. Of the activities, I found the wine glass most interesting. It was cool to see how the frequency pitch changed depending on the type of glass. The prayer bowl was a bit more difficult, as it took many attempts before I could hear any sound. The tuning forks were also interesting, and it was cool to see how the sound changed when more forks were placed on the box. 

Start of the 2nd Semester

Some strategies that worked for me in the fall were using past tests/quizzes/worksheets to prepare for upcoming tests and reviewing the reading for the historical learning goals. I don't think there any strategies that I found ineffective, but rather could be improved. For this semester, I hope to continue and improve on what I did last semester, and meet with Byron more often if I have any misunderstandings or confusion. 

Newton's 3rd Law and Interaction Diagrams

Learning Goal 4.2- I can analyze motion within the framework of Newton's 3 Laws.

Prior to this week, I knew Newton's 3rd Law as "for every reaction there is an equal and opposite reaction". In class, I learned it more precisely as "all forces come in mutual interaction pairs". I also learned that the two forces in a 3rd Law pair cat on the different objects, are of the same type, and are equal and opposite. I was then able to apply this to interaction diagrams, which detail the forces acting between objects, as well as free body diagrams. 

Quiz 4.1

This past Friday, we took a quiz on learning goal 4.1. I felt pretty good about the quiz coming in, and after looking at the answer key, I think I did pretty well. I definitely liked the multiple choice format on some of the questions on the quiz, as well as the optional challenge problems. Overall, I feel pretty good about the quiz as well as my understanding of learning goal 4.1. 

Motion Mapping

Learning Goal 4.1: I can describe motion (in particular, rates of change) in a variety of quantitative and qualitative ways.

This past week we learned to make make and analyze motion maps and graphs. We tooks videos of basketball shots and used the the path of the ball going into the air and coming back down to create a parabola. We then drew several velocity vs time graphs and motion maps. I understood the difference between the two for the most part, and the main concepts seemed to make sense to me.

Unit 3 Project

For my project for Unit 3, I chose to to the advanced problem solving worksheet for learning goals 3.2 and 3.3. I haven't done much of it yet, but from what I have done the work fits the description of advanced, as it has been pretty challenging so far. I think that this problem set should be helpful in preparing for the upcoming test. 

Momentum

3.2 I can apply momentum conservation to closed systems, and can reason about momentum transfer between systems.

This week we learned about momentum through different labs involving both elastic and inelastic collisions. I learned that in an elastic collision, kinetic energy is better conserved than momentum, and in an inelastic collision, momentum is better conserved than kinetic energy. It took me a while to understand the concepts that were presented through the labs, but after comparing the outcomes in each lab it was easier to understand. One thing I'm don't fully understand is the difference between velocity and momentum.