Higher

physics in a lift

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We had some fun in the school lift today, trying to confirm what we had read about apparent weight.  Although the effect was small, we managed to spot the same effect as was demonstrated by David jumping off a desk with a set of 100g masses hanging from a Newton balance.  

I found a link that puts some words around our findings.  Follow this link to find out more.

image: “elevator” by Beard PaPa

Projectile motion

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We spent a lot of time looking at projectiles and projectile problems in class so this should be a concept that you are comfortable with.  If you are still a little unsure, there is a good summary page here.  The page contains interactive questions to check your progress – just make your selections and press the green “=” symbol each time to find out if you were right.

Here is another site with a decent summary.  It has a flash animation showing how motion in the x and y directions are treated independently and explains the method to solve projectile questions.

remember vectors?

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We’ve been dealing with vectors since the very start of the Higher Physics course.  Before the holidays, we looked at displacement, velocity and acceleration as vectors.  Over the last 2 weeks, we have discussed velocity in the context of projectile motion and looked at the vector nature of forces.  

Some of the problem solving tasks we attempted towards the end of last week suggested people were a little rusty on vectors so I have looked out some youtube revision materials to jog the memory.

Sometimes clips go into too much detail for our course or start introducing alternative methods that we have not used in class.  To prevent confusion, I’ve suggested how much of each video is relevant for the Higher course.

 

The first 6 minutes of this video clip introducing vectors may be helpful.

 

Watch this one up to 2:50 for a good review of our June work on displacement.