DynaKars are fantastic devices for producing distance-time and velocity-time graphs. They are really engaging and my classes just love them. They are constantly asking me, "are we using the DynaKars today, Miss?" "No, because we're learning about Biology..." They are really easy to use and set up, just plug and play and the software is really accessible. It can plot different shaped graphs for motions, be used instead of a light gate for a whole journey, really used for any sort of motion analysis. Another fantastic thing about them is you can easily find the area under the graph or the gradient to find acceleration or distance travelled, which makes them fantastic for KS3 or KS4. The cars have hooks at their base so they can be accelerated with masses and pulleys and are a much more exciting form of the traditional trolley down a ramp (which is the only experiment any adult can ever remember doing when I tell them I'm a Physics teacher). A really awesome little piece of kit, making motion graphs much more exciting!
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I read a great article about using scratch to teach Physics principles and thought I would try it out.
It's a great chance for students to play with ideas. I tried it with the year 12s- they didn't have much programming experience but managed to produce nice models in the end. Using programming is a good way to introduce the concept that velocity is a change in position and acceleration is a change in velocity. I've put the instructions below but you can find the project here.
MatchGraph! is a free game from Pasco Scientific and it is well worth playing if you have their data logging software. It uses their motion sensor and blue tooth transmitter. Connect your iPad to the bluetooth sensor and away you go. You are given different shaped distance and velocity graphs that you have to try and act out in front of the sensor. You are then marked on accuracy and given a score out of 100. The graphs range from easy to very difficult and are brilliant fun. They children loved this from KS3 to A Level who were incredibly competitive about it. It's fantastic. I would normally get the children to draw motion graphs for their partner to act out: this is a great activity to do after they have warmed up with that as they can be assessed. With weaker groups, you can get them to discuss the shapes before they give them a go. It's so good we even got it out for the royal visit!
I love a theme park! We had my favourite school trip of the year this week: Physics Trip to Thorpe Park! Last year, when I wasn't in charge, it was just a jolly but this year I was determined to make it educational. We went to the science of roller coasters talk, which was actually very good for a GCSE audience and I thoroughly recommend it to other teachers. I also asked the students to download accelerometers for their phones and take data on the rides. The two accelerometers I suggested were Physics Toolbox Accelerometer for Android and Mobile Science Acceleration for IOS but really this would work on any of them. I exported the acceleration data to excel and then plotted graphs. We then discussed that acceleration is in the same direction as the force they feel (F=ma) and they had to guess the roller coaster. The one above is really good because it has all the sinusoidal sections showing the corkscrews (it's collossus-my favourite!) It's quite difficult to ensure that the pupils held their phone exactly vertical (I strapped mine to my arm with a running band) so it's difficult to look at up and down coasters but it's great at picking out circular motion. Which ride is this one?
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