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.

Pushing Things Around [PhET]

I like what PhET has done with Forces and Motion: Basics. In the Net Force section, a tug of war can be arranged with various players. If teams are composed symmetrically, neither will win. But there are other ways to bring about a tie. And what happens if one team is winning, the sim is paused, and the teams are recomposed so that the forces are now balanced, and the sim is unpaused?

In the Motion and Acceleration sections, the relationship between force, mass, and acceleration can be observed. And did you make your your mannequin faceplant?

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.

A Bundle of Phyz: MOTION

Motion may be the most overrated topic in introductory physics. It is often the first topic covered in the course, and in some courses, the pure study of kinematics can linger from August through September and deep into October. That struck me as excessive, but any physics course is largely the story as told by the instructor.

The bundle begins with perhaps the first Conceptual Physics Alive! lecture filmed, "Linear Motion". Groundwork is laid as terms are defined and examples are provided.

"Motivating the Moving Man" is a PhET-fueled sim lab that focuses on translating motion graphs into verbal descriptions and verbal descriptions into motion graphs.

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: NUCLEAR PHYSICS

Segment 4 of Physics of the Universe (the NGSS Three-Course Model physics course) is all about nuclear physics. There are only six segments for the whole course, and one of them is nuclear. I don't know about you, but I know I wasn't going hard at nuclear physics in my regular physics course prior to Physics of the Universe.

The bundle opens with a question set for Conceptual Physics Alive's "Radioactivity," followed by a PhET-fueled fun activity, "Radioactive Speed Dating" for some quick radiometric dating practice. 

A Bundle of Phyz: ATOMIC PHYSICS

This bundle begins with Paul Hewitt's homage to atoms, followed by The Mechanical Universe episode, "The Atom." Different perspectives, indeed.

"The Photoelectric Effect" Lab Springboard utilizes a few videoclips and PhET's The Photoelectric Effect sim to introduce this surprising topic.

"Fantasia on the Photoelectric Effect" provides a mechanical model to help understand the phenomena.

For a more quantitative look into the photoelectric effect, "Shine a Light" uses PhET's Photoelectric Effect sim. Students collect data, calculate key quantities, and plot results.

A Bundle of Phyz: STARS + THE BIG BANG

This might seem like a bit of a detour from the more traditional physics topics covered in the previous bundles. But "Stars and the Origin of the Universe" is Segment 6 of Physics of the Universe in the NGSS Three-Course Model. And there are no Conceptual Physics Alive or Mechanical Universe episodes in this realm.

This bundle opens with NOVA's "Secrets of the Sun," and The Universe's "Life and Death of a Star." We close our stories of stars with NOVA's "Universe Revealed: Age of Stars".

A Bundle of Phyz: LIGHT AND COLOR

As fortune would have it, there are many Phyz things involving light and color.

The bundle opens with an encyclopedic "Tour of the Electromagnetic Spectrum," produced by NASA. Next up is a look at a 2008 viral ad campaign, "Cell Phone Popcorn". Popping corn with phones was an urban legend in the early days of smartphones. 

Next up is a colorful sequence. "Pixel Peeping" and "Fun With Colors" were originally written for in-person instruction, but modified into Virtual Labs for remote teaching/distance learning (RT;DL). Conceptual Physics Alive's "Light and Color" follows nicely. Then a pair of color mixing YouTube Physics lessons explore cephalopod camouflage and the mystery of magenta. How much do you know about chromatophores?

A Bundle of Phyz: WAVES AND SOUND

Waves: it's difficult to communicate without them. I consider them to be fundamental to the study of physics. 

This collection opens with two PhET-fueled experience-builders, "Water Waves in an Electric Sink" and "High Quiet Low Loud". It continues with video lessons from Conceptual Physics Alive "Vibrations and Sound I" and "Vibrations and Sound II," with The Mechanical Universe episode, "Waves" in between. It ends with the BBC's somewhat metaphysical examination of waves and their intrinsic ephemeral nature, "The Secret Life of Waves".

A Bundle of Phyz: WAVES AND SOUND at Teachers Pay Teachers

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. 

Fun With Colors [PhET]

Once I saw how much students enjoyed exploring colors with Pixel Peeping, I thought I'd take that curiosity a step further with an add-on activity that didn't require any materials beyond the means of running PhET's Color Vision simulation.

Running this in-person required my first distribution of color copies. I printed the student documents in quantity on my color laser printer at home until I was able to secure a color laser printer for my classroom. Unfortunately, there came a time when the school's principal decided to wage war on the cost of printing done by teachers and rejected all in-room printing supply requests. So I had the printer, but no more toner. And no more printed pages. I trust the savings were worth it.

In any case, "Fun With Colors" is quirky and brief, so I posted it as a freebie.

Fun With Colors [PhET] free at Teachers Pay Teachers

Pixel Peeping [PhET+Virtual Lab]

Students have been looking at screens too much for about two years. Some would say it's been longer than that. But have they really looked at those screens? Up close? "Pixel Peeping" asks them to do just that.

For the in-person version, we used pocket magnifiers to examine the pixel structure on our classroom laptop LCD screens. We protected the screens from the magnifiers with sheets of transparency film. (You remember transparencies, right? And carbon paper, film canisters, telephone cords, ...)

PhET's Color Vision sim is activated. The activity begins innocently enough with microscopic inspections of red, green, and blue. Things take a turn when white is examined, and go off the rails with yellow.