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In this inquiry activity, students will discover the relationship between length and pitch (frequency), tension and pitch, and mass per unit length and pitch without being instructed first. Many students confuse pitch…
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This lab introduces students to refraction using something they can experience. They really do not understand what is going on when a pencil is put into water and appears to bend. It is difficult to see rays of light…
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This inquiry activity will be students’ first exposure to ray diagrams. They will be using the refraction of sound to simulate the refraction of light to introduce them to this concept. They will be creating a simulated…
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This is the first time that students will draw technical ray diagrams (in previous experiments, they simply sketched the rays). They need a little instruction in drawing ray diagrams before they can do it, so the…
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This inquiry activity will be used before discussing curved mirrors in class. Students will discover how curved mirrors act and how the size and the orientation of the image are related to the distance from the mirror.…
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This activity is inquiry in that students do not know how colors are combined. They likely think that the primary colors are red, yellow, and blue. In fact, there are two sets of primary colors: red, green, and blue for…
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Although this lab is not an inquiry activity, it is another exercise to help students think about light rays and ray diagrams. The students think that the point of the lab is to calculate the diameter of the Sun. Really…
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This activity is Level 2 inquiry in that students will not know in advance that the relationship is inverse square. Although they may not get a perfect inverse square graph, it will be clear that it is not a perfect…
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In this inquiry activity, students will discover some of the rules of reflection of water waves, how waves travel around boundaries, and how waves move floating objects before they have learned these concepts. If…
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This lab is a Level 2 inquiry activity that should be taught after students understand acceleration but before they learn the equations for calculating the acceleration of a body dropped from a certain height. After…
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Students will once again be reminded of the inverse square nature of light intensity. This is a concept that students often struggle with, especially when calculations are involved. The important idea of this lab is not…
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This activity is inquiry in that students have not yet studied interference or interference patterns. Students without a computer at home should be instructed as where they can go to use a computer with speakers that…
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In this inquiry activity, students will get some experience with static electricity before getting deep into electricity and magnetism. They will not know which combinations will generate static electricity and will…
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In this lab, students will experience the interaction of charged objects. Students should realize that the phrase “opposites attract” isn’t exactly correct. It is not just positively and negatively charged objects that…
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This inquiry activity is performed before students understand the difference between current and voltage. Students also determine the procedure themselves and design the data chart and graph on their own. This makes it…