We just finished looking at wave motion. To start, we looked at pendulums and the relationship between the period, the amount of weight, and string length. A couple of stop watches, ring stands from the chemistry lab and weights borrowed from physics and we were good to go. It adds an extra day on the front end but I think it helps my students get a better understanding of what's going on, plus it's fun/interesting. Fun/interesting is an core objective in my class.
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While I was shopping for supplies in the physics lab I stumbled upon a spring weight set. I couldn't help myself. I set up some demo videos of pendulums and springs for the students to model. Since my students aren't equipped with laptops, tablets, or the like, I needed some other way to get them the data. I ended up using and Physics Video Tracker to get a data file. Then I imported the data into a Geogebra spreadsheet in order to plot the points and create a data file for the students. I only have 42 minute classes, so any time wasted means multiple days on the same concept. I only have two days budget for the modeling aspect of this exploration of trigonometric transformations.
The first two files have sliders for all the variables. The last several do not. I required each student to come up with 4 equations. Two from the easy column and two from the not-so-easy column. We were able to complete the modeling portion lesson and a summary classroom discussion within two class periods. Not bad. Not bad at all.
The first two files have sliders for all the variables. The last several do not. I required each student to come up with 4 equations. Two from the easy column and two from the not-so-easy column. We were able to complete the modeling portion lesson and a summary classroom discussion within two class periods. Not bad. Not bad at all.
Trig Transformations--Pendulums and Spring Weights
| Geogebra Files with Sliders (easy) 
| Geogebra Files without Sliders (not so easy)
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