Jim’s posthaven

The first day of school is important. Teachers know this. Dress sharp. Do not show your fear. Smile. Shake hands. move around the room. For years I have lead a physics tour. Student file into the room and the second the bell rings I say follow me, and we go on a tour. I loved this because they do so little on a typical first day in any other class. It screamed we are going to do things in this class. It did not require laptops (which get handed out in English class the first day), pens, papers or anything else.

So this year I did not know what to show them. The goal is simply stated, bringing light to rural schools in Nicaragua, but the path is unknown in many ways. What I wanted is to set them up with the reason that this goal is physics. So what is physics? I am not sure. But I do know a few things about it.

The week before school I got an email from the NSTA physics list serve. One of the heroes of the list serve is Frank Noschese. He sent this gem to the list as an opening day lab.

I've also done a ball bounce challenge.
Each group get a different bouncy ball (tennis, lacrosse, golf,
handball, pinky, superball, etc.)
The challenge: Drop the ball though a horizontal hula-hoop elevated
off the ground so that the ball rises back up to the level of the
hula-hoop. The catch -- they only get one chance. (Similar to your
hit the target).

Kids do not know the height of the hoop in advance. However, they can
"play" with their ball and take whatever data they need first. Then
all the balls are collected and the hula-hoop is placed. Students can
measure the height of the hoop and make a prediction for their drop
height. When they are ready to drop, they get their ball back to drop
it.

If you cannot get a set of different balls, but can get identical
balls, then each group gets a different hula-hoop height to prevent
sharing of answers between groups.

I hope this makes sense. The data is very linear and is easily collected.