Thursday, March 19, 2009

World of Functions....Quiz 1

Any questions?

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Bored?

If you ever feel bored in class and want to be challenged, just let me know.

I will keep a list of advanced topics here that we can examine at outside of class.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Kinematic Videos

Here are some videos from a physics class.

Note: They use 10 m/s^2 (sometimes 9.8 m/s^2) for the acceleration of gravity. In our class we are using 32 ft/s^2




Here is a link to a presentation on vectors. It is really good.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Quiz Friday



Quiz this Friday. Topics that are fair game include:

  • Solving quadratic equations with either exact answers or decimal equivalent
  • Solving for distance traveled for a moving object
  • Solving for the final velocity of a moving object
  • Solving for the time it takes a moving object to move a certain distance

Are you ready? Questions?

Monday, February 2, 2009

Look Out Below

Its been a long time....

Today, we reviewed the answers to Look Out Below

1. 1 sec = 50 ft/sec; 2 secs = 70 ft/sec

2. Avg speed is 50 ft/sec (How did we get this?)

3. Travel 100 feet in 2 secs (Can you use the area model to get this?)

4. 3.2 secs to fall 200 feet (Can you use the area model to get this? -OR- Can you use the equation below to get this answer?)

5. h(t) = 200 - 10t^2 - 30t. This is derived from the physics formula that some students remember: displacement = 0.5*a*t^2 + vi*t

The top of this page has more information on the formulas we are interested in.


Here is a site that can help with the physics concepts. We also proved some of them in the assignment "FreeFall".

Thursday, January 8, 2009

HW20 and 21

Look here for the book's answers to HW20.


For HW21, some students suggested that the fall time from the 6 o'clock position of a moving Ferris wheel will be the same time as just dropping the diver from the 6 o'clock position of a non-moving Ferris wheel.

Is this true?
At the 6 o'clock position, won't the diver move similar to this ball to the right? And this definately has to take more time than just falling straight down from the 6 o'clock position, doesn't it?







Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Uniform Circular Motion


I found these pictures from the internet that illustrate the initial path (velocity vectors) of objects moving in circular motion.






Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Identities

Here are some sites for trig identites...



Sine

Cosine

Tangent



This site has a quiz to test your skills. Here is another.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Pythagorean Properties for Trigonometry

This page has a bunch of trigonometric properties.

This site derives the different pythagorean properties.
Here is trig property matching site.





Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Its SNOWING...

I stumbled upon this blog. I thought it was interesting. It looks like this class is doing pretty much the samething we are doing. Notice this post about the Pythagorean Property. I also like the idea of having students as scribes to blog about what happened in class each day. I am definately going to think about incorporating that into the class.

Here is another math blog. A. B.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Polar Coordinates

Here is an example of polar graph paper. Notice that its circles of different sizes.

What would the polar coordinates be for the point indicated on this graph?


I would estimate (4, 48 degrees).

Here is the wikipedia entry for polar coordinates.

This website might help. Here is another.

Here is a java script that is pretty good.

Friday, December 12, 2008

NO.NO.NO.NO.

The Physics teachers (thanks Mr. Lin and Ms. Kovacs) said that we are not done with HighDive. They said that it's okay to neglect the wind resistance, to neglect the "mass" of the diver, to neglect the friction in the bearing of the Ferris wheel, to neglect the fact that we would need Hulk Hogan to hold the diver by his legs, and to neglect the unlikeliness of a diver being able to actually dive into the cart and not SMASH his face on the bottom of it.

BUT, there were adamantly against us not taking the initial velocity of the diver into account.

What do they mean by the "initial velocity" of the diver?

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Quiz

Friday we will have a quiz that will address Goals 1 and 2.



  1. Graph trigonometric functions and variations on those functions (and be able to identify the critical points)

  2. Relate the concept of inverse functions to define inverse trigonometric functions (and be able to find missing angles)

How comfortable are you in regards to these 2 goals?


This is a pretty good study guide. Here is another one.


Here is a good site to see how changing values affects the amplitude, period, and the midline.

What is a sine equation that represents this graph?


Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Cool Physics Pics

These are some cool pictures. But, do they relate at all to our High Dive Unit problem?
















Almost Done?

I think we have learned enough to solve the unit problem.

We have equations to calculate the height of the diver, the x-coordinate of the diver, the fall time of the diver, and the x-coordinate of the cart.

We tried to see if the diver would fall into the cart if the wheel time (W) was 13.33, and we discovered that the cart would pass the diver.

On our group quiz, we tried to see if a wheel time (W) of 9.5 would work, and from examining the quizzes, most groups are saying that "NO" the diver will not fall into the cart.

What strategies could we use to solve for the "right" W?

Monday, December 8, 2008

Equations...

Today in class we generated several equations.


Which ones were helpful? Which ones should we definately have in our notebooks? Which ones should be taped to the wall of our classroom?

One equation we discovered was for fall time -- and I don't mean autumn. Can you use your calculator to calculate the correct fall time if I give you a "wheel time" of 22 seconds?

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Ferris wheel videos

Not me...


Interesting...


Can we rent this for Fun Fair?


This looks amazing, but I would have to close my eyes...


We should bring this guy to Navy Pier with us...

Thursday, December 4, 2008

FreeFall


Answers are posted on the Homework Site.


It looks like the mass of an object doesn't affect the time it takes that object to free fall. Does that make sense? A grape and a bowling ball dropped from the same height will take the same amount of time to fall to the ground?


Any questions, comments, or suggestions?

Check out this video.


Tuesday, December 2, 2008

HW8

What was the point of HW8?

Isn't average speed just the average (mean) of the inital speed and the final speed?

What's the average speed of this graph (from 0 secs to 20 secs)?