Tuesday, Feb 10, 2009 - Block 2 - IB Physics 1

Handed out slips of paper and asked students to write down what they got for the number of atoms in the Sun. They then arranged themselves in a line from small to large. We went over the calculation to get about 10^56.

Had students draw min and max lines of best fit on their graphs for the Graphing Round Object Lab. They found the slopes of these lines, the average slope, and the uncertainty in the slope. This gave them the value of pi and its uncertainty from this experiment.

Talked about using calculators - how to enter in numbers in scientific notation using the EE or EXP key. The difference between 2^2 and 2 x 10^2, how to enter 10^7 as 1 EE 7 and not 10 EE 7. Went over order of operations and had students calculate 3/(2*4) (without the (). To do this on your calculator you need to be careful about the denominator. One was is to use ().

Students put their calculators in radian mode and found the sin(100000000). We compared answers and showed that they are different. Do NOT include all the digits on your calculator as the answer to a problem. More digits does not mean more correct - just the opposite. In this class, round off to 3 or 4 sig figs in problems and on tests.

Talked about expressing large and small numbers in Physics using scientific notation and metric prefixes. Gave students worksheet on metric prefixes, the prefix and the power of 10 are interchangeable.

Showed Powers of 10 video.

Students read Unit Conversion blurb and then did the Unit Conversion Worksheet. I gave them a little time in class to start and then they finished it for homework.