Physics 11 – Students presented their whiteboards after completing all of their lab work. Lots of kids got the equation of a line for the v-t graphs, which was nice to see. They also started showing appropriate thinking such as, “I know that our spool was accelerating faster because the line is steeper.”
One issue is creeping up in the work though. Students are getting confused on when to use a Best Fit Line, and when their graphs are supposed to be discontinuous. I tried to emphasize that BFL are used when the motion is uniform (a ball rolling down the ramp, a buggy driving along the floor), and the discontinuous graphs are for graphs that tell the story of objects that change the motion (starts moving forward, slows down, turns around, etc). There was a lot of head nodding but I’m not convinced that all students really get the difference.
BC Physics 180 