retired physics curriculum: energy

AP Physics (calculus)

I was never happy with this unit. While the kids could certainly do the problems, and mostly seemed happy with the concepts, I never felt like I did the idea justice. Students see little bits of energy in all their science classes, but I don't feel like any of us do a good job showing how it is the same concept cutting across all the disciplines. I also never really went into entropy (other than some cursory comments.) Those misgivings aside, here is my usable stuff on energy.

Objectives, reading, homework and equations for the unit.

I just defined work without explaining why it was useful, and then had the kids do these problems.

An introductory lab to see that the work done is proportional to the square of the speed. I use this to get at the Work-Kinetic Energy relationship.

Work & Kinetic Energy Problems

Just some practice looking at Work-Kinetic energy.

Lab 8-2 (Elastic Band)

A lab looking at the work done by a stretched elastic and comparing to the work done by gravity. Could easily change it to using the phrase potential energy instead.

Conservation of Energy 1

Some simple intro problems with conservation of energy. There is no friction in these problems.

Lab 8-3 (Tossed Ball)

A simple, but great lab. Just lookng at the energy of a soccer ball tossed up in the air over a motion detector.

Conservation of Energy 2

More involved problems with conservation of energy, now including springs and curved paths. Still no friction though.

Lab 8-4 Human Power

The kids determine their power going up a flight of stairs.

Potential Energy Graphs

Just some practice going from a potential energy function to the force and interpreting potential energy graphs.

Conservation of Energy 3

Finally deals with friction.

Lab 8-5 Hot Wheels

Predict the minimum height from which to release a toy car so that it just barely makes a loop-the-loop. Mostly playtime honestly.

Here are the practice tests.

These are handwritten notes. Some of the things I had made for hybrid teaching were pretty reasonable, and these notes were one of those things.

Notes - Kinetic Energy

Notes - Gravity & Work

Notes - Hooke's Law

Notes - Conservative Forces

Notes - Conservation of Energy

Notes - Potential Energy Graphs

Physics (algebra)

As we had already done momentum in this class, so that pops up a handful of times in these handouts. The order of topics here is different than the AP as well.

This is a more open-ended lab that asks the kids to answer the question "how does the steepness of a hill affect the final speed of a ball rolling down it?" Students have to be careful to get good results - one of the common problems is making the height of the "hill" too much, and therefore not being able to get many shallower ramps. In going over the lab, we did not answer why the final speeds were the same, but left it as something to figure out.

We first defined kinetic energy with this worksheet.

Potential Energy

Then we defined potential energy with this sheet. We only considered gravitational potential energy, and did not point out yet why it was useful.

Notes - Kinetic & Potential Energy

Just some independent notes on kinetic and potential energy. Still doesn't say how they are connected.

Lab 8-2 (Tossed Ball)

This is basically the same as the AP lab.

Notes - Conservation of Energy

This is different from the AP version. Only connects kinetic and potential energy in frictionless situations and still no idea of work.

Conservation of Energy

This is pretty similar to one of the handouts I gave in AP.

Lab 8-3 Conservation of Energy

Looks at the potential energy lost compared to the kinetic energy gained of a cart and a hanger.

This is different from the AP versioon as the kids have already know about kinetic and potential energy - and we didn't do any forces at an angle. (We used to, but throwing in vectors in this unit just seemd to drag it out and made it harder for the kids to see the big picture.)

Definition of power and some basic problems.

Same idea as the AP lab, just more guided. This is pretty quick.

Work & Power Practice

Some problems with work and power.

The review sheet.

page last updated 10/19/23 by david mcclung, copyright 2023, all rights reserved.