Essential Physics Teacher Lab Manual
The following list of lab activities are from PASCO's Essential Physics Teacher Lab Manual and are designed for use with the Essential Physics Comprehensive Equipment Kit. You may preview and download individual student handouts or the complete Student Lab Manual. Teacher resource files, including answer keys, can be accessed by signing in to or creating a PASCO account.
Grade Level: High School
Subject: Physics
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Activities
01A) Graphs of Motion
What do graphs of motion look like? The Smart Cart is a device that displays its motion—position, velocity, and acceleration—on your computer in real-time while you move it! Look for the connection between the forces you apply to push the Smart Cart and how the Smart Cart’s position and velocity change.
03B) Motion Graphs
How do we predict and object’s position at a later time? Graphs and equations are valuable methods for describing the motion of an object.
04A) Acceleration on a Ramp
What is acceleration and how does it relate to speed and velocity? A car rolling down a ramp accelerates. A car given an initial velocity up a ramp accelerates at the same rate!
04B) A Model for Accelerated Motion
How can a velocity versus time graph be used to determine displacement? An object’s position changes as it accelerates.
05A) Newton's Second Law
How is an object’s acceleration related to the net force acting on the object? When the forces acting on an object are unbalanced, the object accelerates. Newton’s second law describes how an object’s acceleration is related to the amount of net force acting on it.
05B) Hooke’s Law
How are force and displacement related when stretching a spring? In this investigation you will measure force from the spring, and spring deformation (spring deflection) using the force and position sensors on the Smart Cart.
05C) Static and Kinetic Friction
What determines the force of friction? Friction is everywhere and can be either helpful or wasteful depending on the situation.
06B) Projectile Motion
What is the angle that maximizes the range of the projectile? How are the projectile motion equations used to calculate a projectile’s range? Projectile motion occurs whenever a moving object is under no force except gravity. The equations of motion for each coordinate axis are different—and independent of each other—so you can analyze them separately. Combined, the equations are used to describe the range of a projectile.
06C) Acceleration on an Inclined Plane
What is the acceleration of an object down an inclined plane? What do the motion graphs of an object down an inclined plane look like? Galileo Galilei used inclined planes for his quantitative experiments into the nature of position, time, and acceleration.
08A) Static Equilibrium
Objects remain at rest only when the net force and the net torque are zero. The converse is also true: if an object remains at rest, then you know the net force and the net torque must be zero. The first statement predicts whether an object will remain at rest or begin to move, while the second statement is used to determine unknown forces.
09A) Work and the Force Versus Distance Graph
How are force, distance, and work related graphically? To lift a mass, you must do work on it against the gravitational force.
10A) Inclined Plane and the Conservation of Energy
What law governs the energy transformations of motion on an inclined plane? If you have ever skied down a mountain, biked down a hill, or ridden in a roller coaster you know going downhill causes your speed to increase.
10B) Work and Energy
How is the work done on a system related to its change in energy? How is the efficiency of a system calculated? Have you ever pulled a swing back and let it go? The work you do to pull the swing backward and upward is converted into gravitational potential energy.
10C) Springs and the Conservation of Energy
Can energy conservation be used to predict the behavior of a system? A system consisting of a cart on an inclined track, attached to a spring, has three forms of mechanical energy as the cart rolls down the track.
10D) Work Done by Friction
The work done by friction reduces the amount of energy available for transformation into other forms.
11A) Conservation of Momentum
The law of conservation of momentum is a powerful generalization of Newton’s third law. For an isolated system, the total momentum of all the objects inside is constant.
11B) Inelastic Collisions
In this investigation you will explore how the total kinetic energy and momentum of a closed system involving two carts is affected by a perfectly inelastic collision between the carts.
11C) Elastic Collisions
How can we predict the outcome of an elastic collision? A collision between two carts is nearly elastic, but not completely. In this experiment, you will push a red Smart Cart into a stationary blue Smart Cart and explore how the total kinetic energy and momentum of this system is affected by a collision between the carts, and how it compares to the simulation.
11DC) Crash Barrier
Construct a crash barrier designed to minimize the impact force experienced by a cart in a collision.
12A) Levers
What is the relationship between the output force and the input force? How do we design a lever to have a mechanical advantage?
12B) Pulleys
How can ropes and pulleys create mechanical advantage? How does a block and tackle machine work?
12C) Ramps and Inclined Planes
How does a ramp change the force required to move an object uphill? When the Egyptians built their massive pyramids, they faced the engineering challenge of how to lift the heavy stone blocks vertically into position. The Egyptians may have moved the blocks up ramps constructed along the side of the pyramid. How would using a ramp make their job easier? In this investigation you will measure the force required to move the cart up a ramp to a height of 30 cm.
12D) Gear Ratios
How do gears work? How do the number of teeth affect the turns of a gear machine? A gear is a wheel with teeth that interlock with matching teeth on another gear. Gears are found in many machines from cars to CD players and bicycles because gears efficiently transmit rotating motion and can create mechanical advantage. In this investigation you will create machines with two and three gears. The goal is to find a formula which relates the number of teeth to the number of turns.
12E) Designing Gear Machines
How do you make a large gear ratio? How are gear machines designed? Your challenge is to design machines with the following ratios.
12G) Mechanical Advantage of Gears
How do gears create mechanical advantage? How do gear machines, such as a transmission or winch, operate?
14C) Resonance
When periodic forces are applied to a system that can oscillate, the resulting motion can vary tremendously. If the frequency of the force matches a natural frequency of the system, a very large amplitude response can occur. The extra-large response is what we call resonance.
15A) Waves
What is a wave and what are the properties of waves? A wave is a traveling form of energy that carries oscillations from one place in space to another. Sound and light are waves and share characteristics of frequency and wavelength with familiar water waves.
15C) Interference
How does the amplitude of a wave change when it encounters another wave? When multiple waves exist in the same place at the same time, interference occurs. Wave interference can be either constructive or destructive, causing the amplitude of the resultant wave to be different than the individual waves. In this investigation you will observe the interaction of wave pulses on a spring and draw a conclusion about when constructive and destructive interference occur in waves.
16D) Resonance and Sound
How do we create specific frequencies of sound, such as in music? A guitar string vibrates at its natural frequencies. Other objects, such as wine glasses and tuning forks, also vibrate at their natural frequencies. The frequencies are controlled by properties such as size, mass, and string tension.
16DC) Design a Musical Instrument
Create a musical instrument that plays the frequencies of all 8 notes of a major scale, has working parts consisting of metal bar (or tube) with lengths less than 1 m, and has a total mass of less than 5 kg.
17A) Electricity and Circuits
How do you build a circuit? The Modular Circuits kit provides an easy and quick way to prototype and design electronic circuits. This investigation explores how to build simple circuits using the kit and to relate the circuit to a comparable equivalent circuit diagram.
17B) Voltage and Batteries
How do you connect batteries to increase their total voltage? When Alessandro Volta invented the first electric battery, he connected several individual battery cells together to create a more powerful composite battery. How did he connect them? In this investigation you will connect two batteries together and determine how to make the largest combined voltage.
17C) Resistors and Ohm’s Law
How is resistance measured? Ohm's law I = V/R is the fundamental relationship between current, voltage, and resistance in a circuit. Devices that measure resistance are based on Ohm's law. These devices apply a known voltage and/or current, and then determine the resistance. In this investigation you will use a similar experimental technique to measure the resistance of a bulb.
17D) Series and Parallel Resistances
What are the advantages and disadvantages of series versus parallel circuits? Have you ever had a string of holiday lights where one bulb is burned out, preventing all the other bulbs from lighting? Was it easy to find the burned-out bulb? This investigation explores series and parallel circuits by connecting bulbs and observing their brightness. By comparing the two circuit types, you will learn why the wiring of some strings of lights allows one bad bulb to disconnect all the other bulbs.
17DC) Design a Lemon Battery
Design a battery using different metals inserted into a lemon. Test the effect of different metals. Use a voltage sensor to measure voltage.
17E) Electrical Power
How is power related to energy? What determines the power rating of a device? Electrical devices are commonly rated in units of power, such as a 100-W light bulb or a 1200-W microwave. The electric company bills homes in units of energy. Why the difference? In this investigation you will build circuits containing two different resistors in series and parallel (representing two different electrical devices) and measure the power and energy output of each device for each circuit.
17F) Compound Circuits
How can voltage, current, and power be used to predict the behavior of electric circuits? In the first part of this investigation, you will predict the brightness of bulbs in a circuit. Bulb brightness is a measure of the dissipation of power. In the second part, you will explore the properties of a commonly used kind of circuit called a voltage divider.
20A) Magnification of mirrors and lenses
What kinds of images can be made by lenses and mirrors? Mirrors change the direction of light through reflection. Lenses bend the direction of light through refraction. Both mirrors and lenses can create images. Images may be upside-down, right-side-up, larger or smaller. How the image appears usually depends on the geometry of the lens or mirror, and also on the location of the object and the observer. This investigation explores images formed by single lenses and mirrors.
20B) Reflection in a Plane Mirror
How and where does an image form in a mirror? If you look at yourself in a mirror, then where is your image located? In this investigation, you will use three different techniques for locating the image produced by a flat mirror.
21A) Refraction of Light
How does light refract at a boundary? What is the index of refraction of water? Refraction may change the direction of light rays passing from one medium to another. The differences in index of refraction between the two media determine how much refraction occurs. In this investigation, you will analyze light rays passing through air and water and determine the index of refraction of water.
21B) Creating Real and Virtual Images with Lenses
What is the difference between real and virtual images? How can you create real and virtual images with a convex lens?
21C) Image Formation for a Convex Lens
How does a convex lens form an image? How do you measure the focal length of a lens? Light travels in straight lines unless an optical device—such as a mirror or lens—diverts its path. A convex lens is used in cameras and refracting telescopes to redirect light rays in order to focus light and form an image.
21D) Build a Microscope and a Telescope
How do a microscope and telescope work? The basic microscope and telescope are each a compound optical device that uses two lenses. The object is imaged by the first (or objective) lens; this image is used as the object by the second (or eyepiece) lens. By choosing particular types of objective and eyepiece lenses, and by separating the two lenses by a suitable distance, both the microscope and the telescope can produce magnified images.
26B) Phosphorescence
What property of light is required to cause a material to phosphoresce? Glow-in-the-dark plastic may seem like a toy, but it has powerful physics embedded into it! The science behind it is called phosphorescence. A phosphorescent material glows for a while after it has been previously exposed to light. In this short investigation you will explore what kind of light is necessary in order to make the plastic phosphoresce. Why do some colors make it glow and others don't?
