Physics 11 – Here are two props that tend to get used a lot while investigating forces. The bowling ball and the hover craft / frictionless soccer disk. They both play an important role of demonstrating an moving object with balanced forces on it.
The discussion starts with observations and descriptions of the ball as it rolls across a level table. How would you describe the motion? How can you tell? Can you confirm that the motion is constant? What forces do you know are acting on it? Every student thinks there are at least two forces. Some students say there are only two, some say that there are three or four. Some students intuitively have a good grasp of Newtonian mechanics and sometimes it’s required to get them to not shout their thoughts – a strong and confident voice and silence other dialogue prematurely, especially when other students accept the other voice without critically thinking about it.
The importance of identifying forces acting on the object is not fully developed with this demo. The students need to elaborate on their ideas, particularly with drawing Force Diagrams.
I also introduced the idea of inertia with them, as a way to describe an object’s desire to keep doing what it’s doing (its resistance to change of motion).
BC Physics 180 