The movie 'Speed' inspires a high-quality, hands-on physics lab activity

摘要

If you can tie the content you create to known areas of student difficulty on exams and other assessment measures, then you further improve the likelihood that teachers will use your resources and take advantage of the professional development opportunities you offer. The most effective way to learn the details of core content, student difficulties, and the needs of teachers is to establish a genuine collaboration with them. An example of the result of such collaboration is the Stunt Car Lab, which specifically addresses difficulties New York State (NYS) students have on the 2D projectile motion problems often found in the NYS Physics Regent's Exam, a statewide exam. Inspired by the movie "Speed," this lab has students calculate the maximum height and distance of flight for a Darda car launched at three different angles. In the figure shown, one student prepares to launch his car to measure its initial velocity using a photogate. Another student will catch the car in a net so as to not reveal its trajectory. The students will use this initial velocity to predict and then test the car's trajectory. Cheers are usually heard when students succeed in sending their car through a "ring of fire" set at the location of the car's maximum height. This type of excitement and engagement in science is contagious. Dwight "Buzz" Putnam, a veteran NYS high school physics teacher, created this projectile motion activity as a part of the lab development program of the Center for Nanoscale Systems Institute for Physics Teachers (CIPT) in collaboration with Arbor Scientific, a commercial producer of science hardware for schools. The CIPT is the education and outreach program of CNS, an NSF-funded Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center at Cornell University.