Physics, taught by Ms. Chase, is a course that aligns with the AP Physics 1 and AP Physics C curriculums. In physics, we cover many different topics including kinematics, dynamics, energy, and circular motion through individual practice, group learning, and interactive labs.
The first unit we learned this year in physics is kinematics and the study of motion. To apply to skills we learned in the unit, we completed a lab that compared the motion of a cart and a battery-operated car. In this lab, we investigated the speed and acceleration of both moving vehicles. We found that the battery-operated car traveled at a constant speed while the cart driving down the ramp had an increasing acceleration.
The unit of dynamics focused on force and how all the forces on an object can affect that object’s movement. For our dynamics lab, we got to choose what we wanted to investigate so my group decided to answer the question of if Newton’s Second Law (the acceleration of an object is dependent on the net force acting upon the object and the mass of the object) applied to a cart moving on a modified Atwood’s machine. Although our experimental values did not equal our theoretical values, when accounting for human error, it can be argued that we were able to prove Newton’s Second Law in this experiment.