Middle School Physics Videos

Physics is a broad range of topics.  Some students can grasp pretty quickly while others are more difficult.  I have found that topics around force and motion are ones that stump some students.  Newton's laws are particularly difficult for students.  I believe that part of the reason is that these laws are complex and it is hard to bring them down to a middle school level without introducing misconceptions.  I don't know what the solution is, but I'm going to keep trying to present these topics to my students in new and different ways.  One way is these short video clips that I found.  There are shot clips around 3 minutes long and come with a short quiz at the end.

What struggles do you have teaching physics to your students? 

Demonstrating Newton's Laws

This is going to be a short post because I really want to share with you a blog post written by Brandy at Half a Hundred Acre Wood.  She is a homeschooling mom who came up with an awesome way to demonstrate Newton's three Laws of Motion.

Take a visit over to this blog post to read what Brandy has to share!

Top 5 Posts of August

Happy Beginning of the School Year.  I hope that your year is going well.  If you are looking for some ideas, here are the top posts of August.  

1. Physics Girl - physics, astronomy and science-related videos
2. Genetic Mutations and Disease Interactive
3. The making of a volcano
4. Why Does the Moon Have Phases? - literacy activity
5. Video Clips for your Electricity Lessons

The making of a volcano

I love Live Science and I recently came across an animation they made of the making of Mount Etna and how it shaped the ground around it.  This would be great to show in class and the accompanying article can be made into a literacy activity.

You can check out the animation and read the article here.

A secure way to have students take tests and quizzes online

Microsoft has developed a super easy way to lock down students' computers so that they can also access the webpage that is hosting your online test. Student's won't be able to use the clipboard, go to another website or apps, share their screen or print anything.

All you need is the link to your online test (it doesn't have to be anything fancy; I use a form I created through Microsoft or Google) and a way to get the link out to the students. Students do need to be on a computer that is running Windows 10. I also recommend that they use the Edge browser as I haven't encountered any errors using it.

 The link that you need to share with the students is ms-edu-secureassessment:<URL>!enforceLockdown where you would replace <URL> with the url to the quiz. You want to make sure that there are no spaces in the address. I would also recommend that you set the link to display as a word or phrase so that students don't just copy and paste the quiz url instead of the whole long url. If you are not sure how to do this, leave a comment with how you are sending out the link and I will make a tutorial for you! If you want more information on the Take a Test app, you can read about it here.

This post also appears on my technology blog - The Tech Savvy Science Teacher

Physics Girl - physics, astronomy and science-related videos

As a female science teacher I always love to see girl involved in science.  I really love the Physics Girl YouTube Channel.  Diann Cowern is the physical girl and her channel is focuses on physics, astronomy and other science-related topics.  It includes DIY demos, research and interviews.

I've picked out a few videos from her channel that caught my eye, but I suggest you check out the other videos to see what you can use in your classroom.

 

Why outlets spark when unplugging - EMF & Inductors

5 Science Tricks with Explainations

Stacked Ball Drop

Seven Science Experiments with Surface Tension

Teachers on Twitter

I use a variety of social media, but mostly all for different purposes.  For me, I use Twitter to follow what is happening with education, edtech, science and local news.  I am always looking for new people to follow.  Classtools created a page called Teachers on Twitter as a way to connect follow educators on twitter.

The list is automated and updates itself automatically.  It searches for specific hashtags and uses what it finds to add people to a specific list based on what is written in the person's profile.  The image below shows you what hashtags are connected with each teacher group.  If you have any suggestions of other hashtags you can tweet @RusselTarr to make a suggestion.

This post also appeared on my EdTech blog The Tech Savvy Science Teacher