The Applied Physics course I teach requires me to significantly limit the amount of math. I had to completely re-think the concept of Physics in a high school setting. The result is a course focused on hands-on exploration of physics concepts as well as open-ended experiments the class develops as a group. I've learned a lot about experimentation teaching this class, which has proven helpful as we move toward the NGSS.
Below are some video examples of lessons I've developed for this course.
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Sun-Earth-Moon to Scale
This was cool for the kids to experience the size of the sun by standing on its surface. And filming it with the drone was a unifying goal that gave the group purpose. |
500 ft Timeline of Earth and Drone Project
This saw the class really hitting its stride working as a cohesive group. |
Measure Distance Using the Speed of Sound [Gazdonian Productions]:
An off-handed student suggestion spurred this challenge: Can We Measure Distance Using the Speed of Sound?. We spent weeks problem solving the heck out of this one. Definitely a highlight of my 17 year teaching career. In this video we're asking for help from sound experts when we got a little stuck about 70% of the way through the project. |
How Strong is a Trader Joe's Paper Bag? [Gazdonian Productions]:
Every time I go to Trader Joe's (frozen green beans!) they always double bag my groceries, with the cashier adding a comment along the lines of, "I'll double-bag these because our bags are not strong." So I decided to test how much a single bag could actually hold. We even got TJs CEO Dan Bane on board (amazingly) and he was into our test. So that was cool. |
Version 2: Is Your Skateboard Slower in Cold Weather? [Gazdonian Productions]:
The weak design of my first stab at this experiment has always bothered me. So I set out to create a better experiment from the ground up to answer the age-old question "Does Cold Temps Affect My Skateboard?" This one is much better. |
Build It! The Sound Improver Project [Gazdonian Productions]:
School should be more about doing. Something I found at a park one morning lead to this project where students build their own device to improve the sound quality of their cell phones. Before starting this project we learn a little about acoustics. |
Friction: How Adding Sand to Ice Reduces Friction[Gazdonian Productions]:
An overview of an experiment we did on a huge sheet of ice in our school's courtyard. |
Law of Reflection: Two Mirror Reflection [Gazdonian Productions]:
This takes the straight-forward Law of Reflection and turns it into an interesting problem-solving activity for students. If you hold back from showing students how to do it and instead provide only gentle nudging, students really get into problem solving mode.
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How to Tape Stuff [Gazdonian Productions]: Both the students and I enjoy open-ended experiments that we've never conducted before. This is a pretty basic one, but after doing it I'll never use tape things the same way again. So that's cool.
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Graphing Relationships: Kid on Bike [Gazdonian Productions]:
My students consistently struggle with graphing relationships. To help solidify the concepts I knew presenting clear, real-world situations would be the best chance for success. In lieu of the all-too-common scenario of a teacher standing in front of class saying, "Imagine a kid riding a bike...[insert a stick-figure diagram being poorly drawn on the board]..." I wanted to show an actual kid riding and actual bike. So me and my son Danny took to the sidewalk and I use the resulting video as raw material for students to sketch line graphs for accel, displacement and velocity.
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Graphing Relationships: Skateboarding Clips [Gazdonian Productions]:
This is my next step for teaching graphing relationships after the Kid on Bike clips. I show the individual clips in this video one at a time and have students graph variables such as acceleration, displacement, velocity vs. time for each. I can see kids' minds working as they do this. It really helps to engage students in what is a generally boring topic for them [graphing]. |
Torque in the Real World [Gazdonian Productions]:
A quick video I filmed to show how I apply the concept of torque in my driveway. |
[ATTEMPT 1] Bearing Test: Is Your Skateboard Slower in Cold Weather? [Gazdonian Productions]:
A conversation with a fellow skater one cold January morning at NYC's Chelsea Piers skatepark prompted this classroom experiment. UPDATE: Look for the new and improved test of cold-weather skateboarding we conducted in Feb 2018. Editing in progress... |
Is it Worthwhile to Pre-Heat Your Coffee Mug? [Joe Werner, student]:
This is a "video lab write-up" a student made for this heat transfer experiment. |
