My 1st year physics classes start off the year with a lab on day 1. Students will collect data to describe the motion of these “Tumble Buggies” with graphs, equations, and words. This is the paradigm lab for the constant velocity unit in the Modeling Mechanics curriculum. Each group will have different instructions. Students will look for similarities and differences in their graphs, equations, and descriptions.
Here are some examples of the whiteboards that students created to share their results. This year, I decided to let students roll with their instincts to write the equations without units or symbols that suggest the variables from their graphs so that we could fit this into one day. The discussion was a quick one (10 minutes to talk, 3-4 minutes to write after the discussion). I love that students experienced a full length lab experience on day 1.
Randall Physics 