Random Projects
This section is for all of the activities that I have used through the years, but do not fall into the previous sections. I really enjoy watching the students work on projects and the more I can get them collaborating, the more "fun" they are having in my class. This year, I have noticed that my honors physics classes have done their best work when engaged in group, problem solving based projects. So, as a result, I have created more for them to work on! Quite a few of these projects do involve using some free apps that your students can easily install on their phones. I have also started using Scratch programming with my students to introduce them to coding. I hope that you are able to find something to use here and feel free to email me if you are looking for a rubric or another idea.
I do this project with my particle physics unit, but you could do this just about anywhere in your curriculum. I was thinking of trying it out next year to have my students show me the difference between velocity and acceleration.
This one I have not tried with my own students yet due to some scheduling challenges I encountered last semester...welcome to teaching! Love giving my students a chance to be creative...hope to do this one next year!
Been doing this one all my life, right? We have all made Hot Wheels raceways, now we are just asking the students to build them in a physics class. A great way to introduce all kinetic and potential energy. You can introduce the concept of work, too. Depending on the class, this activity can get very calculation heavy.
A lot of my former students have told me how important coding is in their academic lives now. So, I decided to bring coding into my honors physics course. Of course, it has been too long since I took a course in coding, luckily there is Scratch! This is my first assignment for my students using block coding and they loved it!
What better way for your students to show their understanding of motion graphs than to create a story? I allow the students a lot of freedom to choose the media that they will use to tell their motion story. Most of the students used powerpoint, but they were still pretty decent.
Escape Rooms are all the rage right now, so I found this app that uses augmented reality to create a codebreaking activity. I used this with my Newton's Laws unit and it worked great as a review for the assessment. The students created their own clues and then played each other's game.
The librarians in my school are always asking to have classes use the library. Recently, they purchased materials from BreakoutEdu and I thought I would see what my students could come up with. This is another one of those activities that could be used anywhere...I happen to use it with my particle physics unit.
Who doesn't remember the original video game Pong? For fun and to give my students some practice with Scratch coding I have this extra credit assignment for my students. I have not used it yet so I am very curious to see what the students come up with???
This year I was lucky enough to get to purchase a kit of Spheros. These programmable robots are amazing! I did not know what to expect with them, so I have only just started using them with my students. A lot of activities are found in the actual Sphero website. This egg drop was one that I modified for my students.