10/4 Back

      Walking into room 266 this morning I found myself once again checking the board to find the destination of the previous night's homework. I found that the worksheet Guided Reading 2.4-2.5 was to be turned in to the blue 2nd period folder. While up at the folders I checked my return one and took two papers back from it. They were the previous Guided Reading and the Peer Evaluation from our recently completed POGIL. Following the inevitable ringing of the tardy bell, I rifled through my folder before coming across our other assignment for last night, a healthy number of book problems (never questions.) I laid the piece of notebook paper out on my desk and proceeded to check my answers with the keyand my partner, Ethan Leonow. After a subsequent session of questions in regard to the book problems, Coats-Haan announced that tomorrow we will be going outside. Therefore, we should all wear appropriate shoes, although CH did say "We won't be trudging through the mud."

      After checking our homework and storing it away, CH decided to liven up the classroom; we watched a video on YouTube. The video was very amusing. It consisted of David Letterman dropping various objects from the Five-Story Tower. The objects included, but are not limited to, bowling balls on a waterbed, turkeys on trampolines, and glass lawn ornaments. Watching the video really, truly helped us all finally grasp what a free fall is.

      Next we took notes on free fall. The most important thing, CH said, is to change all velocities and accelerations to deal with y by changing the subscripts. The notes were about as brief as this paragraph.

      We did an example free fall problem, where CH told us that we were all mimes. Upon successful completion of the problem (where apparently I carried on a Back tradition?) we began and completed a Pair Check to make sure we understood how to do the free fall problems. Ethan and I worked through each problem, checked our answer on the board, and finally turned the worksheet in about five minutes before the bell.

      As I looked up to the Honors Agenda on the whiteboard one final time for the day, I begrudgingly copied down our homework for the night. We are to complete problems #37-46 (not questions) on p. 54 in our textbook.

In regards to the question of the day "Suppose you were standing at the top of a 10 meter high ladder and you were going to jump to a mattress below (this is a really bad idea!).  Give three possible combinations of initial and final heights for your jump," it must be noted that the initial height is completely arbitrary. However, once the initial height is set, so are all other values associated with the problem. Three possible combination would be: 
Initial Height: 10m          Final Height: 0m
Initial Height: 7968m      Final Height: 7958m
Initial Height: 4m            Final Height: -6m