March+24

March 24, 2009: Mr. Manning’s fourth period physics class started with a reminder of our Hershey Park field trip in late May where we will be enjoying a day at the park while calculating different parts of the rides. With the class understanding that the money was due at the end of the week, Mr. Manning could introduce us to projectile motion. Projectile Motion is any object that is projected by some means and continues in motion by its own inertia. With this new term Mr. Manning explained a lab we would be doing in a week about rolling a projectile down an incline and having it hit a specific target. The new Reading Guide was next on the agenda with a new style where we went over the rubric. After the class understood what we were supposed to do for the unit 9 reading guide, the class read several questions and made prediction about their out come. Mr. Manning would then ask the class what they put, after we had a range of predictions Mr. Manning would do the demos and then we would watch them in slow motion on a 1950’s DVD with Dr. Hume. The first question was regarding two balls released at the same time, one with an initial speed of 5m/s that shot out horizontally and the other dropped straight down with no initial velocity. Mr. Manning then showed us a demo with two balls released at the same time, one had initial velocity of 5m/s and the other dropped straight down. We then predicted which ball would hit the ground first or if they would both hit at the same time. After we had a seen this demo performed by Mr. Manning, we watched it in slow motion. This confirmed our predictions that they would hit the ground at the same time. Learning that the one ball could be traveling at 500m/s and the other ball dropped straight down would also hit at the same time. Knowing that the two balls would hit the ground at the same time we looked at the horizontal distances to see if the ball with the initial velocity would have an increase, decrease or remain constant in terms of its forward momentum. The horizontal distance remained constant at every time interval, but the velocity vertically increased as it neared the ground.