The Home Experiments: 

The lab exercises are below and more are being tested and will be added when nearing completion. In addition, there are links to videos where Adam provides instructions on how to perform the labs. We note that these are continuously being updated and improved so we provide direct access to the google docs document to make it easy for you to copy and modify as needed. The labs are designed to use basic household items and details about the lab kits can be found here. In some cases it is remarkable, at least to us, that relatively good results can be obtained with such simple tools. While possible, and certainly exciting, we do not rely on sophisticated features of smart phones for two reasons. First of all, an accelerometer, for instance, is a bit of a black box: sure a number is provided, but there is an extra unknown layer between the physical world we are studying and the measurement that is provided. It is our view that for some exercises, like the ones presented here, extra sophistication can complicate learning the material. Secondly, not every student has access to the latest and greatest smart-phone. To level the playing field, we prefer low-tech to the degree possible.

Each lab starts with a “warm-up” exercise. This exercise is theoretical and helps students through some calculations of the sort they will need for the lab.

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Kinematics.  Students use the measuring tape and ball. Drop the ball from a 1 m height and take a video with a smart-phone. The video is played frame-by-frame to measure the location of the ball. The frame rate of the video is obtained by taking a video of a stopwatch. Acceleration due to gravity is obtained.

Forces & friction. Students use the ruler, tape measure, spring, and elastic bands. A known weight like a block of butter, can of pop, package of pasta is suspended from the spring to calibrate the spring. Having calibrated the spring, an object is pulled along a surface and the friction coefficients are obtained.

Conservation of Energy. Students use the bouncy ball and an audio track of the bounces to determine the change of kinetic energy to potential energy and the energy dissipated at each bounce. From this calculate the coefficient or restitution. The same exercise is carried out on two different surfaces.

Oscillations and Waves. Students use a video of an object hanging from a spring to study oscillations as a sinusoidal function. They measure the amplitude and angular frequency of an oscillator, and determine what physical parameters affect the angular frequency of your oscillator.

Light and Snell’s Law. Students use pins or paperclips, a protractor, ruler, and a clear plastic box. Fill the box with water, using the pins and the line of sight with and without water to measure the index of refraction of water.