Exam Prep

A few links to conceptual and actual practice problems and further info...

In general, your best bet is to check out the first couple of chapters in The People's Physics Book. The questions at the end of the units & problem-solving chapter and the one-dimensional motion chapter are comperable to what you can expect to see on the exam.

Other helpful links for conceptual understanding and practice problems:

General Summary from the Saint Mary's (Manhasset NY ) website.

Position, velocity and Acceleration at the fabulous Fear of Physics website

Stuff to know:

• Units, Scientific Notation, Significant Digits
• Distance vs. Displacement, Scalar vs. Vector
• Vectors, vector addition, Vector Diagrams
• Average Velocity, Constant Velocity, Instantaneous Velocity
• Free Fall, Up & Down Free Fall

Does everything fall at the same rate?

Motion / Graphing Motion:
(Velocity, Distance, Acceleration)

The physics of motion along a line

Describing motion with words

Describing Motion with Diagrams

Free Fall and the Acceleration of Gravity

Cat Physics

http://catphysics.ytmnd.com/

Bowling for Physics

With Round one of the QHST Physics Bowling tournement now complete, the score so far is:

Physics Teachers: 0
Physics Students: 0
Montessori AP's: 0 (though the team was floored by the competition)
4th Floor hallway: 6

The tournement resumes early Wednesday morning with the Emerson Physics Class.

Accelerating to a halt?

Acceleration is defined as
the change in velocity over time

As we discussed in class, acceleration can be a positive or a negative value. The example we used were two of the three controls in a car, the acclerator (duh) and the decelerator(or, perhaps more correctly, the negative acclerator?), more commonly known as the brake.

Exactly how they change the motion of the car is what we'll be looking at this week.

QHST Reaches new heights?

Last week's lab had students go outside and measure the height of QHST using their distance from the building and the angle to the top of the building (measured by use of a simple hypsometer made from a protractor, string and a couple of washers). Trigonometry lets you use one side and an angle to fins all other sides and angles.

The height of the building at the point measured (at the top of the South stairway) is approximately 91 feet.

What if you only had a barometer, paper and pencil - could you still measure the height of the building? These guys did. Note that they first used physics to get the answer. Before you click the link - could you think of a simple method done without trigonometry?