Distance learning/make-up labs for AMTA Mechanics ‘Paradigm labs’
Coming early March, 2021: Collisions of carts for conservation of momentum labs.
On this page I am linking to labs that I created that include multiple videos for students to analyze. I am aiming to have labs for most of the ‘Paradigm labs‘ in the American Modeling Teachers Association (AMTA) Physics -Mechanics units. The goal of these videos is to allow students to watch a YouTube video and collect all necessary data: No plugins or other technology is needed.
These videos have not been screened nor approved by AMTA, however I am a trained AMTA Workshop Leader, and am quite familiar with the pedagogy and methodology. I believe many physics teachers who use modeling as the center of their science teaching will find these videos invaluable.
If you are interested in learning more about the American Modeling Teachers Association, I encourage you to visit their website, and to sign up for virtual (2020) or in-person (hopefully back in action in 2021) workshops.
Over the years, I have wanted to have video collections for students who missed an important labs, and created a few. With the 2020 advent of COVID-19, and all the distance learning students and teachers were confronted with, my motivation increased, and the results are showing up on this page.
Each activity has a link to the “teacher notes” page (each of these is mildly password protected with the word for the study of heat, work, and temperature). These pages don’t provide ‘answers’ to students lab work, but they do contain tips for presenting the lab, including some that teachers may not want to provide to their classes. Please do not share these teacher notes pages with students.
Activities, aka ‘paradigm labs’
- Constant Velocity Model (‘the buggy lab’)
- Teacher notes
- Introduction video (to engage the students in observations that provide the framework for their collection of data).
- Student introduction and videos
- Constant Acceleration Model
- Building a model for force and acceleration
- Building a model of a spring constant
- Energy stored in a spring to energy stored in a gravitational field
- Coming late January 2021.
Your reflections and suggestions
I encourage you to provide me with your successes and failures in using these videos in the comment section below. I will incorporate these into the updated Teacher notes pages.
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Thanks, Lee. Please post to the physics modeling listserv, with the URL, so that many teachers will benefit. Also, kindly post on your other make-up video labs , because some teachers don’t start the school year with mechanics.
Lee, thank you for the effort. I have a collection of videos that I have done with my students but have never made the effort to edit organize and collate them. Well done!