Craft Time?

I do try to integrate craft time into physics class as much as is reasonable. For many students doing a lab is straightforward. Students do the lab, do the calculations, and move on. However, there are a number of students that really enjoy cutting out the paper, making their experiments unique, and taking ownership of their work. I bet this leads to increased retention/diversity, although I am not sure.

I know that some students who have busy schedules, child care, work, etc, find doing this kind of work annoying. One student even yelled at me about it this summer. But if we were in person, they would have lab for about 3 hours twice a week. This lab shouldn’t take that long.

Equilibrium Lab

We do an equilibrium lab during our Physics I in-person labs. It works nicely during the school year. I am a big fan of the lab – especially if students are forced to go through the torque calculation by themselves.

So I tried to reproduce the lab in an online environment. It mostly failed.

Here is the assignment:

1. Cut out at least three separate pieces of heavy paper in known geometries (Square, circle, triangle, etc).  They each should have different areas

2.  Determine their area.  (Coloring them each a different color could be helpful)

3.  Find a stick of some sort and hang it with a string.  Make sure that the stick’s center of mass directly aligns to the string so it is perfectly level.

4.  Now find three equilibrium solutions by hanging your weights at different places.  (You cannot place a weight at the center of the stick.)

5.  Using torque equations and ruler, verify your answers.

And I attached this image with the lab for reference (its from my daughter’s science book):

Here is a good report (other than the unit issue in the area):

Click to access equilibrium.pdf

Here is one example.

The biggest problem!

The mass of the paper is NOT enough. More mass is needed to make the equilibrium more clear. There were even some cases where the string holding the paper was not taut. When my daughter and I did it, we used stock paper and it worked nicely. I think I need to be more explicit about using heavier objects.

Also some students didn’t have the equilibrium position of the stick down. It just went wacky from there.

One thing that continues to surprise me with the labs is that there are students that do not do the calculation part of the labs. I understand that students do not get what they need to do or may become confused. But then they should reach out and ask for help. I am trying to be accessible as possible.

Also my instructions were terrible. I should rewrite them to be more clear. I do try to leave this stuff vague so that students have to figure it out themselves. Again, I love open ended questions. But if I miss, it usually goes bad.