Cary Hylton

Physics, AP Physics
Chemistry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ESSENTIAL UNDERSTANDINGS

 

Syllabus
Physics with Technology
Springville High School
Cary Hylton
Brief Description of Course
Physics with Technology is a first-year high school physics course with an emphasis on the use of technology.  The class follows the Utah State Core Curriculum for physics. 
Every college-bound student should have at least one year of high school physics.  An understanding of physics is useful for college students in every discipline.  Science or engineering majors require substantial expertise in physics. The course also provides a foundation for students who will pursue technology-related vocations.  Physics is the foundation on which all other sciences are built and a background in physics aids in the understanding of chemistry, biology, geology and all other sciences.  Students will study the laws of motion, forces, energy and work, rotation and gravitation, heat, sound, light, electricity and magnetism and some modern physics such as relativity, atomic theory and quantum physics.  Physics is an experimental science and the course emphasizes laboratory work and investigation. 
Prerequisite:  Elem. Algebra.  Recommended:  Intermediate Algebra, could be taken concurrently.
Open to Grades 10, 11, 12

Unit Information
Term 1
Unit 1—Motion (10 block periods or about 4 weeks)           
Topics:  Scientific method, measurement, SI units and unit conversions, significant figures, displacement, velocity, acceleration, graphs of motion, constant acceleration, free fall, projectile motion, vectors and vector addition, uniform circular motion, centripetal acceleration.
Labs:  Paper Tower (team work and planning), Physics 500 (average velocity), Moving Plot (graphing motion), Ruler Drop (free-fall acceleration).
Unit 2—Forces (10 block periods or about 4 weeks)
Topics:  Inertia, Newton’s 1st Law, Newton’s 2nd Law, Newton’s 3rd Law, components of vectors, weight, normal force, friction, equilibrants, pressure, centripetal force, torque, fundamental forces.
Labs:  Mechanical Forces and Spring Constants (Hooke’s Law), Paper River (vector addition), Skateboards with Spring Scales (Newton’s 2nd Law), Friction, Weighing an Elephant (torque).
Term 2
Unit 3—Work, Energy, and Momentum (13 block periods or about five weeks)
Topics:  Work, kinetic energy, work-kinetic energy theorem, gravitational potential energy, mechanical energy, conservation of mechanical energy, simple machines, mechanical advantage, efficiency, power, momentum, conservation of momentum, collisions, Kepler’s laws of planetary motion, universal gravitation, effects of gravitation, relativistic gravity.
Labs:  It’s All Uphill (work exploratory lab), All Work and No Play (work), Down the Ramp (conservation of energy), Efficiency of Pulleys (mechanical advantage), Muscle Up! (power), How Hot Are Your Hot Wheels? (mechanical efficiency).
Unit 4—Thermodynamics (9 block periods or about 4 weeks)
Topics:  Kinetic-molecular theory, thermal energy, temperature, thermal expansion, heat, conservation of energy, conduction, convection, radiation, Newton’s law of cooling, specific heat, heat exchange calculations, latent heat, state changes, isovolumetric processes, isothermal processes, adiabatic processes, First Law of Thermodynamics,  Second Law of Thermodynamics, entropy.
Labs:  Give and Take (Heat exploration), Hot Stuff (determining a specific heat capacity), You Make Me Boil (energy of state change).
Term 3
Unit 5—Waves and Sound (8 block periods or about 3 ½ weeks)
Topics:  Wavelength, amplitude, period, frequency, velocity, oscilloscopes, wave interference, nodes and antinodes, pitch, sound intensity and loudness, Doppler effect, resonance, timbre, beats.
Lab:  Mechanical Snake (wave exploration), Oscilloscope Lab, Ripple Tank, Chalk Talk (sound exploration), Speed of Sound in Air.
Unit 6—Light  (10 block periods or about 4 weeks)
Topics:  Electromagnetic spectrum, luminous intensity and illumination, polarization, reflection,  plane and curved mirrors, ray diagrams, refraction, convex and concave lenses, color, total internal reflection, light dispersion, diffraction, interference.
Lab:  Pinhole Camera; Images, Images, Images (mirror exploration); Snell’s Law; Concave and Convex Lenses.
Term 4
Unit 7—Electricity  (13 block period or about 5 weeks)
Topics:  Law of charges, conservation of charge, ways of charging, Millikan’s experiment, Coulomb’s Law, charge polarization, electric fields, electric potential, capacitance, electric current, electric resistance, Ohm’s law, schematic diagrams, electric energy, electric power, electric circuits (series and parallel and combined series/parallel).
Labs:  Mapping Electric Fields, Mystery Cans (Ohm’s Law), Sparky the Electrician, (circuit exploration), Ohm, Ohm on the Range, Part 1 (series circuits), Ohm, Ohm on the Range, Part 2 (parallel circuits).
Unit 8—Magnetism and Electromagnetic Induction (5 block periods or about 2 weeks)
Topics:  Law of poles, magnetic fields, magnetic domains, Earth’s magnetic field, electromagnets and solenoids, magnetic force, right-hand rule, electromagnetic induction, alternating current and AC generators, comparison of electric motors and electric generators, electromotive force, Faraday’s Law, Lenz’s Law, transformers, electromagnetic waves.
Labs:  Determining the magnetic field around a current-carrying wire.
Unit 9—Atomic and Subatomic Physics (6 block periods or about 2 weeks)
Topics:  Blackbody radiation, photoelectric effect, atomic and nuclear structure, wave-particle duality, de Broglie wavelength, binding energy, nuclear fission and fusion, radioactive decay and nuclear equations.

Textbook
Title:  Holt Physics
Authors:  Raymond A. Serway and Jerry S. Faughn
Publisher:  Holt, Rinehart and Winston
Copyright:  2006

AP Physics C: Mechanics
2008 – 2009
Cary Hylton

Brief Description of Course
AP Physics C: Mechanics is an in-depth course in physics that corresponds to the a first semester
course in mechanics for engineering and physical science majors at a university. It is designed as a second year course for students interested in deepening their understanding of physics. Since
differential and integral calculus will be used throughout the course students should have already
completed or be concurrently enrolled in AP Calculus. Topics in Newtonian mechanics explored in the first year course will be studied in greater depth and with an emphasis on analysis and problem solving.

Approximately twenty percent of class time will be spent on laboratory activities. In some cases students will be required to design their own experiments and in every case there will be opportunities to collect, organize, evaluate, and analyze data. Students will be asked to interpret lab results and to make inferences and generalizations from their observations.  A lab notebook is required and will be graded. Twenty-five percent of the student’s grade will come from lab work.

Learning is student focused and each student is responsible for his own success. The teacher acts as a guide and facilitator to student learning. The teacher will frequently use discrepant events or demonstrations that produce unexpected or puzzling results to stimulate thought and discussion. Students will work together with lab partners or in small lab groups as appropriate, participate in class and small group discussions, and complete daily homework assignments as well as longer-term assignments and projects.

Each term there will be a term project that students will be expected to complete. Often these
projects and labs are open-ended and may lead in unexpected directions. The goal is for students to apply the concepts and strategies they learn in this course to novel situations. Students should become experienced in both expanding the specific to the general and in reducing general concepts to specific problems.

The final grade will be calculated as follows: Homework: 25%; Labs and projects: 25%;
Quizzes and Exams: 50%

Unit Information
Unit Name or Timeframe:
Term 1
Unit 1: Measurement and Motion Along a Straight Line (9 block periods or about 4 weeks)
Topics: The nature of physics, SI units and unit conversions, significant figures, displacement, average and instantaneous velocity (including differentiation), average and instantaneous acceleration, graphical analysis of motion (including slopes of tangent lines), free-fall and other constant acceleration examples.
Labs: "Grandfather Clock," an introduction to the lab using a graphical analysis of pendulum length to period; "Analysis of Uniformly Accelerated Motion," the measurement of acceleration as a glider slides down an inclined air track.

Unit 2: Vectors and Motion in Two and Three Dimensions (13 block periods or about 5 weeks)
Topics: Vector addition; vector components; unit vectors; using graphing calculators to solve vector problems; displacement, velocity, and acceleration in more than one dimension; independence of motion; projectile motion; uniform circular motion; reference frames and relative motion (including an introduction to special relativity as time permits).
Labs: "Vector Addition on Maps," an introduction to vector addition; "Force Table Equilibrant" to calculate and verify the equilibrant of three randomly selected force vectors; "Water-balloon Launching" to predict and measure range in projectile motion.

Term 2
Unit 3: Force and Motion I & II (13 block periods or about 5 weeks)
Topics: Force, inertia, Newton’s laws of motion, weight, normal force, friction, tension, free-body diagrams, air resistance, centripetal force, fundamental forces.
Labs: "Atwood’s Machine," to verify and evaluate Newton’s laws of motion; "Static and Kinetic
Friction," to evaluate the effects of weight and surface composition on coefficients of friction;
"Centripetal Force," to explore the effects of force, mass, and radius on an object moving in circular motion.

Unit 4: Work and Kinetic Energy and Conservation of Energy ( 9 block periods or about 4 weeks)
Topics: Work, dot products, Hooke’s law and work done by a variable force (including integration), kinetic energy, work-energy theorem, power, conservative and nonconservative forces, gravitational and elastic potential energy, law of conservation of energy, potential energy curves and equilibrium.
Labs: "Mechanical Forces and Spring Constants," to investigate the relationship between a force
stretching a spring and the spring constant; "Work and Energy," to determine the work done on an object by integrating under the curve on a force-position graph.

Term 3
Unit 5: Systems of Particles and Collisions (9 block periods or about 4 weeks)
Topics: Center of mass, Newton’s second law for a system of particles, linear momentum,
conservation of linear momentum, impluse, impluse-linear momentum theorem, elastic and inelastic collisions in one and two dimensions.
Labs: "Ballistic Pendulum," to use conservation of energy and conservation of linear momentum to find the muzzle velocity of a ball fired from a projectile launcher; "Conservation of Momentum," to verify the law of conservation of momentum in two-dimensional elastic collisions.

Unit 6: Rotation, Rolling, Torque, and Angular Momentum (11 block periods or about 4 1/2 weeks)
Topics: Angular displacement, velocity, and acceleration; rotational inertia; rotational kinetic energy; torque; cross products; Newton’s second law in angular form; rolling; angular momentum; conservation of angular momentum.
Labs: "Moment of Inertia," to measure the moments of inertia of a variety of ojects using a pulley
system; "Angular Momentum," using gyroscopes and a variety of other spinning objects to investigate the effects of angular momentum and its conservation.

Term 4
Unit 7: Gravitation and Oscillations (11 block periods or about 4 1/2 weeks)
Topics: Newton’s law of universal gravitation; priciple of superposition; gravitational field;
gravitational potential energy; Kepler’s laws of planetary motion; energy of planetary and satellite motion; simple harmonic motion; oscillating mass on a spring; energy of an oscillating system; simple, physical, and torsion pendulums; resonance.
Labs: "Energy in Simple Harmonic Motion," to analyze the energy in oscillating systems and test the law of conservation of energy; "Pendulums and Gravity," to measure the local gravitational field strength.

Unit 8: Review and preparation for the AP exam. (5 to 6 block period or about 2 to 2 1/2 weeks)

 

Textbooks
Title: Physics for Scientists and Engineers, Volume 1, Ch
Publisher: Brooks Cole
Published Date: 05 January, 2007
Author: Raymond A. Serway
Second Author: John W. Jewett


CHEMISTRY
Cary Hylton

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