A Bundle of Phyz: HEAT + THERMO

The bundle opens with a virtual demonstration of thermoscopes and a discussion of temperature scales. Next we have the classic ball and ring thermal expansion demonstration guide, followed by a demonstration to see the difference between hot and cold in a couple of ways.

The Mechanical Universe's "Temperature and the Gas Laws" is up next, followed by Conceptual Physics Alive's "Heat, Temperature, and Expansion".

Physics in the Fountain of Fizz [Virtual Demonstration]

The Diet Coke Mentos geyser seems to have erupted onto the popular culture scene around 2006. Many analyses of the geysers focused on the "chemistry" of the eruptions: the interaction between the candy's shell and the soda.

To be a bit different, I created this activity to focus on the physics of the eruptions. When remote teaching/distance learning (RT;DL) came along, I was determined to keep this demo alive.

A Bundle of Phyz: MOMENTUM

The bundle opens with the springboard (guided classroom discussion with presentation) that introduces momentum.

Next we have the "Take a Flying Leap" springboard, an exploration of impulse that ends with me jumping off the historic Victoria Falls Bridge between Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The Kinetic Karnival of Jearl Walker then takes us through stories and demonstrations of "Forces & Collisions". Jearl chops through concrete bricks with his bare hands and survives a cinder block being smashed on his chest while sandwiched between two beds of nails.

Things That Go "Bump" [Virtual Demonstration]

Is there more force when objects collide and stick to one another or when objects collide and bounce off each other?

This classic demonstration shows an important difference between elastic and inelastic collisions using "happy" and "sad" balls.

During remote teaching/distance learning (RT;DL), I produced this version of the demonstration. The instructional presentation link is included in the answer key; it's best if the instructor guides students through this. For Zoom presentations, Instant Reaction polls are included.

Things That Go Bump [Virtual Demonstration] at Teachers Pay Teachers

Includes

Student document (print-friendly Google Docs file on Google Drive)

Instructional presentation with observation videoclips (link embedded in answer key)

Answer key

A Bundle of Phyz: FORCES

The bundle opens with a PhET-fueled simulation lab activity that I used as a precursor to an in-class, hands-on experiment involving carts and motion tracking (not included here).

Next we have an in-class (in-Zoom?) direct instruction activity fleshing out Newton's Second Law via a series of fanciful shopping cart races.

Paul Hewitt offers instruction in Conceptual Physics Alive's "Newton's Second Law".

The bundle is a bit weak in Third Law curriculum. That topic is best taught via hands-on activities. But we do have Hewitt's "Newton's Third Law" and The Mechanical Universe's "Newton's Laws".

Newtonian Shot [Virtual Demonstration]

Two dart guns are fired toward the ground simultaneously. One fires a light dart, the other fires a heavy bullet. Which dart hits the ground first?

I use this demonstration after teaching all three of Newton's laws of motion. Students identify, discuss, and debate possible outcomes before the demonstration is carried out. The presentation includes a carefully crafted slides and compelling high-speed video. 

This one is among my favorite demonstrations in mechanics.

Blowout Newton [Virtual Demonstration]

This demonstration is my first use of the blowgun (repurposed use of Pasco Scientific's Lenz's Law Demonstrator) in my Physics class. In AP Physics 1, we leveraged the blowgun on a tour of the equations of motion during our study of kinematics. (See Blowout Kinematics.)

So if the calculation of the launch speed inspires déjà vu, there's a good reason for that. We do ponder where that speed would be legal for a motor vehicle.

A Bundle of Phyz: INERTIA

[Update 3/10/22: Added Newton's First Law Springboard.]

This bundle opens with an activity that was conducted as a lab but was repurposed as a demonstration during remote teaching/distance learning (RT;DL). It's a station exploration of "Inertia in Action".

Next up is "Clever Dumbbell," a classic inertia demonstration that challenges intuition.

Another classic follows with "Cannonball," where a cannonball is dropped from the mast of a moving ship.

Cannonball [Virtual Demonstration]

This is the classic physics thought experiment attributed to Galileo: What happens to a cannonball dropped from the mast of a moving ship?

Except here, we animate it. And in 1968, a talented crew reenacted and filmed it for the Project Physics curriculum. The footage was included in Ztek's Physics: Cinema Classics.

The lesson here invites students to argue for various outcomes and then invest in one. After seeing the actual outcome, students are asked to describe how the demonstration could be modified to produce other outcomes.

Clever Dumbbell [Virtual Demonstration]

This is a classic physics classroom demonstration as modified for use in remote teaching/distance learning (RT;DL).

A dumbbell is suspended from a sturdy horizontal support. Another string is attached to the bottom of the dumbbell. The bottom string is then pulled downward until one of the strings breaks. Which string breaks and why?

The way I wrote this allows students to contemplate the possibilities of what could happen. But rather than make a prediction, they are allowed to request an outcome. This is somewhat jarring since they are usually tasked with predicting. It take a few moments for the "Total Request Live" aspect to sink in. Once it does, they usually vote for the outcome they don't think should happen. For this TpT remastering, I encourage that explicitly in the presentation.

Inertia in Action [Virtual Demonstration]

The activity began as a stations lab before the pandemic. It was repurposed as a demonstration for remote teaching/distance learning (RT;DL). The stations are

Card Trick

A card is laid across the top of a cup. A coin is placed on top of the cup. Get the coin in the cup without leaving fingerprints on the card.

Hoop Dreams

An embroidery hoop is balanced above a tube (such as an air core solenoid). A marker pen is balanced on top of the hoop. Get the marker into the tube in one fell swoop.

Moving Sources [Virtual Demonstration]

Video clips from classic PSSC and other films are used here to show what happens when a wave source is moving while it makes waves. [Sourced from Ztek's Physics: Cinema Classics.]

It is recommended that you work through the included (linked) presentation with the answer key in hand (practice) before showing this in class. The activity should be guided by the instructor.

There are some nice multimedia clips at the end and a Big Bang bonus after the end credit slide, where Sheldon attends a Halloween party dressed as the Doppler effect.

Moving Sources [Virtual Demonstration] at Teachers Pay Teachers

Given the variety of video assets used in the linked presentation, this is another Fair Use freebie.

I added this one to the Bundle of Phyz: WAVES AND SOUND.

Bell Jar [Virtual Demonstration]

In space, no one can hear you scream.

We put the famous tagline from Alien to the test in this demonstration. It's the classic bell jar in which a bell in a bell jar is subjected to a high vacuum as we listen for the sound.

The Encyclopedia Britannica Education Corporation's (EBEC) "Learning About Sound" 2nd Edition, 1974 filming of this demonstration was masterfully executed. 

• Smoke is added to the bell jar prior to evacuation so that the air can be seen. And that smoke is thick! When it's gone, the air is essentially gone.

The Great Bullet Race [Virtual Demonstration]

A demonstration of the independence of vertical and horizontal motion in projectiles.

As the pandemic rolled from the spring of 2020, through the summer, and on into the fall, I started working on ways to move classic demos and labs into the realm of remote teaching/distance learning (RT;DL as I cleverly recoined the popular TL;DR abbreviation).

The Great Bullet Race was an early effort. I wrote about it on The Blog of Phyz.

I used a clip from an old Physical Sciences Study Committee (PSSC) film, "Free Fall and Projectile Motion" (1960), as restored by Ztek in Physics: Cinema Classics (P:CC).

The Great Bullet Race [Virtual Demonstration] at Teachers Pay Teachers

Blowout Kinematics [Virtual Demonstration]

In which I blow a whiteboard marker through an aluminum tube and use photogates connected to a timer and simple rulers to collect kinematics data. Calculating muzzle velocity, acceleration, time-in-tube, and "halftime distance" takes us on a tour of the algebraic equations of motion.

I use this in my AP Physics 1 course.

Here's the story of how I adapted it for remote teaching; distance learning (RT;DL), as told on The Blog of Phyz.

Blowout Kinematics [Virtual Demonstration] at Teachers Pay Teachers

My blowgun-based curriculum goes back... way back.

A Bundle of Phyz: ELECTROMAGNETISM

Upon posting the RT;DL Virtual Lab Experiments related to electromagnetism, I realized I had a bunch of resources on that topic. So I created a bundle to gather and discount them.

A Bundle of Phyz: ELECTROMAGNETISM at Teachers Pay Teachers

The bundle includes the Virtuals: "Seeing Magnetic Fields," "Ørsted's Discovery," "Electric Magnetism," and "Magnetic Electricity," YouTube Skepticism: "Magnet Boys," The Mechanical Universe: "Magnetism," "Magnetic Fields," and "Electromagnetic Induction," Conceptual Physics Alive: "Magnetism and Electromagnetic Induction," NOVA's "Magnetic Storm," and BBC's Shock and Awe: Part 2. "The Age of Invention." All the resources in the bundle are available separately. And they're all print-friendly Google Docs files to accommodate whatever kind of teaching you're doing at the moment.

There's also a link to the activity I wrote for PhET's Faraday's Electromagnetic Lab. It's free on PhET's activities list for the sim as a PDF file.

This is a big bundle. As was the case in the electrostatics bundle, there were some resources that struck me as related to, but not central to introductory electromagnetism. I listed them in the product description for anyone keen to even dive deeper into this topic. 

A Bundle of Phyz: ELECTROSTATICS

Once the Virtual Lab Experiments for electrostatics were posted to TpT, I thought it might be useful to collect all my various and sundry electrostatics resources across all platforms.

After gathering such a "Bundle of Phyz," I realized there were even more. But I wanted to hold the bundle to what I considered the most important to a first-year experience. Maybe someday I'll group the others into a sequel bundle.

For now, here's ...

A Bundle of Phyz: ELECTROSTATICS at Teachers Pay Teachers

It includes Virtuals: A Pithy Matter, Electroscopia, and Charging Ahead, Mechanical Universe: Static Electricity, PhET: Laws of Repulsion, Conceptual Physics Alive: Electrostatics, NOVA: Lightning, and Shock and Awe: Spark. Everything in the bundle can be purchased separately. The advantage of bundling is a discount.

A whole nother bundle's worth of resources are linked to in the product description. They drill down a bit deeper into the realm of the electric field, voltage, equipotentials, and capacitance.

The Magnetism Suite [Virtual Lab Experiments and PhET]

There were several electromagnetism lab activities that I transformed into remote teaching/distance learning (RT;DL), Zoom/breakout-roomable activities. I have upgraded those Google Docs (and added answer keys) and posted them to The Lessons of Phyz at Teachers Pay Teachers.

For the most part, the student instructions remain much as what they would have been for the in-person classroom lab activity. But the observations have been filmed and the videoclips sequenced for remote instruction logistics.

A C T I V I T I E S

Seeing Magnetic Fields [Virtual Lab Experiment]

This is a series of observations involving different configurations of permanent bar magnets. A Magnetic Field Projectual (designed to be used on the stage of an overhead projector). For in-person instruction, each group is given a projectual and two soft-iron bar magnets (freshly remagnetized in our “trusty” magnetizer).

Ørsted's Discovery [Virtual Lab Experiment]

In this sequence of observations, the magnetic field around a current-carrying wire is investigated. Using batteries, wires, and compasses, we eventually develop the mnemonic of "The Right Hand Rule" for the direction of that magnetic field.

To keep things a bit more engaging in the engagement-limiting realm of a virtual lab conducted over Zoom, the configurations in some parts of the activity were randomized. That randomization is announced in the observations presentation.