Constructing Physical Science

Adam Johnston

course notes

universe matters

It probably goes without saying: Trying to understand the entire universe is nearly impossible. Fortunately, it’s also really simple. We’ll try to find some middle ground, honoring both the simplicity and the impossibility. First, there’s only one universe1. That’s good news and bad news. Only havin…

equinox sunset

Sunset in Ogden, UT; 21 Sept. 2020 Yesterday in class we talked about what it means to be the day of the "equinox." We related this to the "equator" and to "equal" amounts of sunlight and darkness in our day. But I also remembered that this meant something about where you could expect to see a sunri…

elevator physics

I like to send people into elevators with scales that they can stand on while traveling up and down. It's a great exercise because they get to see some physics that they are actively a part of. At the same time, it becomes a nice conversation piece as different, surprised observers come in and out o…

motion analysis: rolling

I love to do this lab or one similar to it in person, but you can also conduct an investigation about motion on your own. I've created some videos that you can use to collect data (and maybe these will inspire you to setup a situation from which to collect your own data) and I've also given you a li…

tricky tracks and scattered words

In class, we worked together to make sense of data. We usually think of “data” as something that comes in numbers and graphs, like it did with pendulums and with motion data collected in lab. But it can take many forms, like this example we imagined of indentations on some sandstone: (This is taken …

intro to hot chocolate

For your lab, you'll be investigating what's known as the "hot chocolate effect." You don't need to know anything about this effect and you certainly don't need to try to look it up or read about it. (This usually just makes things worse.) Instead, take a look at my intro and then use this as a star…

getting into the swing of data collection

One of our first tasks has been to collect some data on an object known as a “simple pendulum.” There’s no perfect simple pendulum, but instead this term is used to describe something that swings back and forth with all of its mass stuck to the end that’s swinging. A yo-yo swinging back and forth is…

Newton’s 3rd Law

Whenever two objects collide or interact in any way, we might start to talk about "Newton's 3rd Law." I should say from the outset that I don't like starting with this label, because I think we have to assemble a bunch of experiences before we really have a feel for what we're talking about. At the …

forces, matter, and energy

The concepts of force, matter, and energy get mixed together and confounded. For example, it’s easy to say that forces, matter, and energy are all in the following photos. But these are all distinct from one another, even though they’re related. Where and how do you see forces, matter, and energy in…

science in the making

Collectively, our class recorded positions and times of a bowling ball. This sounds like a funny thing to say unless you were there to witness it. The bowling ball got rolled down a long hallway, and groups were able to synchronize their timing devices and associate a time with a given position of t…

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