Fire one! Fire two!

Today, Mr. Ambrose had his physics class doing a projectile motion experiment. They had a small launcher set up on a lab bench ready for them, suitable for marbles. There was a piece of paper on the floor with distance markings from the muzzle of the launcher. Each student fired a marble once to test range, and then to get data, they put a piece of carbon paper down in the proper area. The whole idea was to measure where the marble landed, and using the height of the launcher, landing point, and acceleration due to gravity, figure out what the speed was when it was launched. For extra credit, they were supposed to figure out where to place a hoop of a given height so that the marble would go through it. Unfortunately, time ran out before that could get done, though several teams did very nice calculations of where to put the hoop. Some of them have caught on very well to the concepts, though there are still a few who seem a little shaky on it, and one or two who are really struggling.

In Ms. Colwell's advanced algebra class, they're learning about joint variation, including combined variation - all those multi-variable equations we all know and love. Some students needed help, but many of them really just need practice. Several students who didn't seem to pay attention before are now taking notes and appear to be trying, which is a great sign. One student who was doing badly has improved tremendously - he raised his hand to answer a question (correctly) today, did well on the last quiz, and appeared to be doing fine on the worksheet they were given. He's one of the students who I suggested go to tutoring; if he did in fact go, it certainly helped. Obviously he's doing something differently. That's one of the best parts of this program - seeing that something has made a difference to one of the students.