As I started to write this entry earlier today, Mrs. Middleton stopped in to talk about "Hogan's Place" and how much she loves that show. So, I had to postpone my penmanship until now.
This is always a tough day, not just for students but for teachers. It is tough to come back after a break and get into studying and learning again. Of course, we are always learning, but sitting in a classroom is tough. So, to help things out today, as we started to talk about motion, we did a couple of fun activities in class in the O, W, and S sections. I pulled out my stomp rockets and we talked about motion, how an object will stay in the same type of motion (direction and speed) until a force changes it. This is the basic concept of inertia, and we talked about the rocket being stationary until a force was applied, and how it fell to the ground instead of staying on the same path because of gravity. The wall also stopped it when I shot it hard enough. At one point, the rocket curved through the doorway and struck Mrs. Middleton's door while she was teaching. Oops!
We also played a flash video game called "Flight of the Hamster". This allowed us to look at motion as well, talking about the forces that keep the hamster in flight. We also calculated the average speed of the hamster as it flew during different trials. In some classes I had enough time to have student challenges to find out how well the students understood motion as they got the hamster to fly as well.
I asked students how fast they had ever traveled in a car with an adult driving. You would be surprised to find that the average fastest speed was about 90 mph! Some had gone over 105, or so they claimed. It is tough to trust anecdotal data like this, isn't it?
I assigned HW 6-1a, 6-2a, and 6-3a for the evening, giving some time in class to work, but not much. All in all, an exciting day for the first day of school in 2008.
The L section did a great job with the acid/base titration lab. I figured out a couple changes to make on the worksheet that simplified the lab and helped them get through it much quicker. Tomorrow we will go over the lab and discuss the results. You can see an explanation of the lab in entries for day 76 and 77.
Sweet justice!
