Rick and Brad: teach Physics at Spruce Grove Composite High School in Spruce Grove, AB (Parkland). think that your students should do lots of labs. believe that kids will never have any fun at school if you yourself don’t have any fun. “You should take the Physics seriously, but don’t take yourself too seriously.”

Our Goal: To expose you to four labs we’ve put together using Hot Wheels tracks and cars. To have a discussion of where these would fit in the Physics 20/Science 10 programs of studies. To discuss how you think these labs could be improved/modified to fit your classroom.

Why Hot Wheels? They are fun! They eliminate some of the “Fear of Physics” kids might feel (or you might feel). They are relatively cheap. They give reasonably good results We get kick-backs from Mattel. They make it easier for students to design labs (the equipment is very intuitive). ~$15, Amazon ~$35, Amazon

Additional Lab Equipment: Aside from the Hot Wheels tracks, we also make use of these BeeSpi “velocity meters” from Prolab Scientific. They run about $100 from Prolab, about $90 from Spectrum. They work great for a number of applications. We have four and they have taken care of most of our photogate needs at school. You can justify them to your Principal/Dept. Head because they can be used for labs in Science 10, Science 20, Physics 20, Physics 30, Science 14/24, etc.

Moving from “The Recipe” to Designing an Investigation The students need to design an experiment to demonstrate the conservation of energy. This can be an intimidating task for many students. You can provide scaffolding for these students by starting off with some teacher-led labs using Hot Wheels, then allowing students to use the same materials in designing their lab in this outcome.

Example Lab 1: Projectile Motion Physics 20 Unit A: Kinematics Students measure the angle of launch and initial velocity to predict the horizontal displacement between the jump and landing track. Then, students check to see if their prediction is correct. Uses a car launcher, jump and one photogate.

Example Lab 2: Conservation of Energy in a Loop the Loop Physics 20 Unit C: Energy Students manipulate the starting height of the car in an attempt to make the car move through a loop the loop. Students take height measurements and predict the speed at the top of the loop and bottom of the loop. The two photogates allow students to check their predictions.

Example Lab 3: Work-Energy Theorem Physics 20 Unit C: Energy Students manipulate initial velocity of the car as it enters the “accelerator”, then measure the final velocity as it leaves. Students can calculate the work done by the accelerator on the cars. The two photogates are needed for this experiment.

Example Lab 4: Conservation of Energy – Elastic Potential Energy Physics 20 Unit C: Energy Students design a lab to investigate the conservation of energy in a elastic band car launcher. The one photogate is used in this experiment.

Pros and Cons: Projectile Motion This lab is quick and allows students to get practice with performing calculations right away. Allows students to get the idea of how kinematics only model real life, but may not give and exact description of motion. Allows for easy “error” and “improvement” discussions. CONS: Not an open-ended lab, it’s really just a “check the equation” kind of lab. Students don’t get to engage in any rich investigation. There’s not much to “design” here in terms of the track, but students have to do some thinking about where to place the photogates.

Pros and Cons: Loop the Loop Such a typical scenario for students in this unit. It’s nice for them to see it in real life. Students get to decide on placement of photogates to minimize frictional forces. Nice connections to circular motion: ask your kids “is it appropriate to model this situation as uniform circular motion?” CONS: The loop can be finicky. It’s worth it to buy a pre-made loop instead of buying regular track and trying to make one yourself.

Pros and Cons: Work-Energy Theorem This can be a tough concept to define (how is Work-Energy different from the Conservation of Energy?), so this gives a pretty practical example of the concept. It allows students to investigate the difference between subtracting initial and final velocities and plugging that into the kinetic energy formula vs. actually finding the difference in kinetic energy as the work done on the car. CONS: Not the most exciting lab… Requires more equipment than the other labs. Doesn’t allow for much “designing” on the part of the students. Might even make a good demo instead of a full on student lab.

Other Ideas? Where else do you think Hot Wheels could be used in High School Science? How could these labs be adapted to Science 10? Science 20? Science 14/24? Science 7/8/9?

Thanks for Coming! Rick Kremp Brad Langdale Twitter: @rickkremp Email: rkremp@psd70.ab.ca Brad Langdale Twitter: @b_langdale Email: blangdale@psd70.ab.ca Website: www.ldindustries.ca