Friction Practice

We started with a very long bellwork, then added a bit to the friction notes from yesterday. Your homework tonight is:

HW: Friction

Honors, you have additional homework: Inclined Planes II

Unit VII: Forces Study Guide

Today and tomorrow you will be working on your study guides. The test is Wednesday.

Unit VII: Forces Study Guide
Honors Unit VII: Forces Study Guide

Don't forget that HW: Forces Practice is due today.

Force Practice

The test for this unit will be next Wednesday, so we're going to do some practice problems to make sure we're ready. You have today to work on this, and it is due on Monday.

HW: Force Practice
Honors HW: Force Practice

Force, Mass and Acceleration Lab Continued

We're still working on the lab from yesterday.

There is no homework for the weekend, but it might be a good idea to start processing your data and graphing it. Insructions to do so are on the back of your lab paper, after the procedures.

Force, Mass and Acceleration Lab

Instead of lecturing about Newton's Second Law, we are going to discover it for ourselves. To whit, we will answer the following questions:

Question 1: How does the mass of an object affect its acceleration?

Question 2: How does the net force applied to an object affect that object's acceleration?

Here is the lab we will use to answer these questions (click here for honors version). We will be taking data today, tomorrow, and possibly Monday. Next week we will talk about errors and complete some analysis questions.

There is no homework tonight.

Newton's First Law Problems

Today for bellwork we talked about some of the problems on last night's homework. We also whipped a tablecloth out from under some dishes and figured out why that's possible.

No homework tonight, but don't forget to turn in "Force and Newton's First Law." Tomorrow we're starting a lab, so wear sturdy shoes and bring something with a stopwatch (most cell phones have one).

Newton's First Law

I had jury duty today, so your assignment was to read and take notes on sections 4.4 and 4.5 in the blue book OR sections 3.4 and 3.5 in the brown book. These have exactly the same information; they are just different editions.

These sections talk about Newton's First Law and the difference between mass and weight.

The Wikipedia article on Newton's First Law is actually pretty good, which you can find here. The Law basically says that without a net force acting on it, an object will just keep doing whatever it was doing. If it was at rest, it'll stay at rest. If it was already moving, it will keep moving in a straight line.

Here is a nice tidbit on the difference between mass and weight. On Earth, an object weighs 9.8 Newtons for every kilogram of mass it has. For example, I have a mass of about 60 kilograms, so on Earth I weigh about 588 Newtons (~133 pounds). On the moon, where the gravity as about one sixth as strong, I would still have a mass of 60 kilograms, but I would weigh only 98 Newtons (~22 pounds).

Homework tonight is "Force and Newton's First Law." We will go over some of the problems when I get back tomorrow, and it is due tomorrow.

Forces and Welcome Back

Today we went over some class procedures/rules and heard about some of your adventures over the break. We also defined a force and learned how to name them.

No homework tonight.