Extractions: You can turn a bus ride into a physics experiment that will even have your fellow teachers scratching their heads. Everyone knows that a weight suspended by a string and taped to the ceiling of the bus will appear to swing backward as the bus speeds up, and forward as it decelerates, due to inertia. Also take along a helium-filled balloon on a string to tie to a seat or fasten to the floor. What will it do? The opposite. You'll have a great time getting students to hypothesize then try to explain the result. We know that air has mass so it also has a certain inertia; when the bus moves forward the weight hanging on the string AND the air in the bus both tend to stay where they are, thus appearing to move backward. The air molecules tend to compress together toward the back of the bus, changing the air pressure in much the same way as barometric pressure changes. Tighter molecules, more pressure. The balloon, meanwhile, is trying its best to move to an area equal in density to its helium (somewhere out in the upper atmosphere, actually) so as the air pressure in the bus increases, it tends to move to an area of lesser pressure. What we really have is a bus full of air sloshing around inside, changing pressure as the bus accelerates, decelerates, or turns, with a balloon trying to get to the area of lowest pressure.
SMILE PROGRAM PHYSICS INDEX Almost 200 lesson plans, grouped by physics topic. Also, math lesson plans are on the same page. http://www.iit.edu/~smile/physinde.html
Morgan Park High School Physics Course Descriptions AP physics course outline, lab manual and lesson plans. Honors and regular physics lesson plans and course outlines. Computer physics course outline and lesson plans. http://www.iit.edu/~rcoleman/physics.html
