Challenge Lab Homework Format

In AP Physics, students complete about 15 challenge labs throughout the course of the year. (I do challenge labs in regular Physics too, but not as regularly.) In a challenge lab, students work together to solve a complex problem that involves making measurements and calculations to predict an outcome that can be measured. Modeling Physics teachers often call these Lab Practicums. In AP Physics, it is common for the FRQ scenarios to be very similar to some of the challenge labs we do. This year, I plan to change the way that I have students do homework after the challenge lab. In year’s past, I have given students a worksheet with a similar question to the challenge lab that they solved. This year, I plan to put more of the ownership on students to do this themselves. I expect this to help individual students “buy-in” more when solving the problem as a team, to make sure that each student is accountable for knowing how to solve the whole problem themselves. Here are the instructions for the homework