High School

Introduction to this Lab

This is a quick and fun lab for makers!  In this lab, a pair of PocketLabs and Phyphox software are used to make a tracer.  As shown in Figure 1, the pair of PocketLab Voyagers are mounted to a small movable rectangular piece of plastic, perpendicular to one another and parallel to two edges of the plastic.  A small black circle is taped to the plastic to serve as the point for following the item to be traced.  In our example, a five-pointed star is traced.  One of the Voyagers is labeled X, and it

Magnetic Fields from Electric Currents

One of the classes of problems dealing with magnetic fields concerns the production of a magnetic field by a current-carrying conductor or by moving charges.  It was Oersted who discovered back in the early 1800's that currents produce magnetic effects. The quantitative relationship between the magnetic field strength and the current was later embodied in Ampere's Law, an extension of which made by Maxwell is one of the four basic equations of electromagnetism.

Introduction

In this lesson students will find that a current-carrying loop can be regarded as a dipole, as it generates a magnetic field for points on its axis.  Students use PocketLab Voyager and Phyphox software to compare experiment and theory for the magnetic field on the axis of a current loop.  A similar experiment not making use of Phyphox can be found by clicking this link.  An experiment making use of a magnet, instead of a

Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton is well-known for the apple that hit his head and the discovery of gravity.  His three Laws of Motion, however, are among the most famous laws of physics.  In this lesson, we are especially interested in Newton’s Third Law of Motion—all forces between two objects are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction.  We will be studying collisions between two identical carts that are bouncing back-and-forth, much like a Newton’s cradle with just two steel balls.  Repelling magnets attached to the front bumpers of each of the carts al

Introduction

Magnets, from the traditional alnico bar magnets to the modern neodymium magnets, have been of interest to most everyone for decades. The attraction or repulsion of two such magnets when brought close together is particularly interesting. This can be expressed by making quantitative measurements relating magnetic field strength to distance from the magnet.

Amusement parks provide an authentic opportunity to conduct real science and apply physics and math concepts in real-world situations.  While visiting an amusement park, not only will you have a fun-filled day of riding rides, but you will get to apply what you have learned about estimation, measurement, motion, forces, gravity, energy, and systems.

In the study of collisions between two carts, it is desirable to collect position data for both carts.  This can be done with a pair of Voyagers, each connected to separate devices running the PocketLab app. Starting data collection on both Voyagers by simultaneously clicking data recording on both PocketLab apps is difficult.  One cannot view the data on a single device in real time, and analysis of data requires combining data from two separate devices.

It would be nice if one could connect two (or more!) Voyagers to the same device—say to an Android device or an iOS device running an app that could display concurrent data collection from both Voyagers.  Such a capability is possible by the use of Phyphox (physical phone experiments), an app developed at the 2nd Institute of Physics of the RWTH Aachen University in Germany.  The author of this lesson has been working with a pre-release Android version of this app that supports BLE (Bluet

Let’s imagine two scenarios:

1.       Two identical vehicles, each of whose speedometers reads 50 mph, travel toward each other and experience a head-on collision.

2.       Another identical vehicle, traveling at 50 mph, hits an unmovable, unbreakable and impenetrable rock wall.

Which collision is more severe from the viewpoint of one of these vehicles?