I’ve been meaning for some time to compile some items that I’ve developed over the years, since the courses I teach don’t lend themselves to using the straight up Modeling Instruction curriculum. I develop items mostly to fill gaps I see in understanding or content, depending on need. I wanted to be able to share this work with the larger physics community.
That said, I do need to issue a disclaimer; I think it is possible, likely even, that some of the materials I hope to post came out of conversations with others, or even after seeing someone else’s materials. If I’ve inadvertently stolen anyone’s work, please let me know and I will remove it immediately. To the best of my memory, however, the materials are original.
This first item arises out of a pretty standard physics problem; analyzing an elevator that is accelerating. I wanted a worksheet, however, that emphasized the similarity between speeding up while moving upward and slowing down while moving downward; likewise, slowing down while moving upward and speeding up while moving downward. I wanted to be able to point out that the common feature in these situations is the direction of the acceleration, and thus the direction of the net force. I also wanted to re-emphasize from our work with Constant Acceleration that a negative acceleration does not necessarily mean slowing down. Finally, I wanted to give students some easier situations before we moved on to ramps and angles.
I use this worksheet with my first year physics course that is similar to AP Physics 1 (it’s concurrent enrollment through the U of MN), and it’s the first thing we do after we build the model by pulling carts with spring scales (kinda like what Kelly does but with 1N spring scales). I also started last year doing it after model building with my ‘regular’ physics class, which is oddly between a standard HS physics course and a conceptual physics course.
I took the liberty of applying a creative commons license to the work, so it may be shared and/or adapted with attribution for noncommercial purposes under CC BY-NC 4.0. This is mostly so that it couldn’t be used for commercial purposes; feel free to use and change (and tell me about it)!
Without further ado, here’s the worksheet, enjoy!