This lesson is motivated by an article by Paul G. Hewitt entitled “Sailing into the Wind: A Vector Explanation”, appearing in the Summer 2017 edition of NSTA’s The Science Teacher. Why not put a sail on a Teacher Geek® cart powered by wind from a fan and confined to move along a track?

In addition to being a fascinating toy, the ZéCar flywheel powered car can be utilized in physics curricula to study conservation of energy.  It is available from a variety of sources, including teachersource.com for under $14.  In this lesson students study energy conservation, including gravitational potential energy, translational kinetic energy, rotational kinetic energy, and work done against non-conservative frictional forces, with emphasis on comparing ZéCar with the PocketLab Teacher Geek

In addition to being a fun toy, the “Slinky” is commonly used in physics classes to qualitatively investigate a variety of wave properties: longitudinal versus transverse traveling waves, superposition of waves, wave reflection from a solid barrier or a free end, and standing waves and resonance.  Many of these investigations work well when the Slinky is stretched out on the surface of a floor.  However, to do a quantitative study of standing waves and resonance, suspending the stretched Slinky from the ceiling offers the advantages of less fricti

With the current growth in interest in flywheels, stemming from concern for the environmental impact of fossil fuel use, flywheels provide a convenient way for storing energy.  Because of this, the study of flywheels in the physics curriculum is well worth consideration by teachers.  Such a study allows for a careful examination of the principles of conservation of energy, as well as both linear and rotational kinematics.  PocketLab Voyager’s ability to collect angular velocity data makes data collection much easier than was required in similar past experiments wit

Carts constructed with the LEGO® Simple & Powered Machines Set are great for studying motion kinematics, as the resultant motion is fairly smooth, resulting in less noisy data.  While you can use the range finder and PocketLab app, it has been found by the author that using Voyager and the VelocityLab app is less noisy as well.  The problem that one immediately confronts when considering this approach, however, is that both the small wheels and the large wheels in the LEGO® set are too small for attaching Voyager.

A pendulum is held vertically and is  then released, impacting a cart that is initially at rest.  This experiment provides students with a lesson for comparing theory with actual experimental results and explaining any differences.  A variety of physics principles, including conservation of energy, conservation of momentum, and impulse, are incorporated into the experiment.  VelocityLab is used to determine the actual speed of the cart after the impact, and the students compare this to speed predictions based upon theory.  In addition, students use impulse concepts to calc

This lesson combines LEGO®’s capability for building powered machines having gears with PocketLab Voyager’s ability to make detailed measurements of the resulting motion.  This lesson uses parts from LEGO®’s Simple & Powered Machines Set.