MPACT

Guiding the flow

The Momentum Machine (we’ve decided to have all of our high school students build one for our next class and experiment)

Outreach

Phone: 503-740-3022

E-mail: eichej@cecs.pdx.edu

Our outreach program is being done with a local alternative high school, Meek Pro-Tech High School. Bimonthly team MPACT works with the students to teach physics worth a quarter of a credit towards their high school diploma.

We have met with our outreach twice already and started with Newtons three laws. Our first lesson included a brief introduction of who we are, our plan, and a short video of other teams in the ‘vomit comet.’ We followed this with a discussion of Newtons laws and in particular Newtons third law: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. After our discussion we broke into teams and ran a short competition of who could smash two cans using hot pads, and cold and hot water. The second lesson was a follow up of Newtons third law where we introduced free body diagrams and friction. We completed our second lesson by building balloon rockets and then leaving our kids to write short lab reports with an emphasis in drawing the free body diagrams of what was going on with the balloons. For lesson three we decided to try something new… We broke the class into 4 sections and made 4 different stations throughout the room where we discussed Newtons 1st law: Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it. Our four stations included a short video with questions to be answered, a discussion table, a short experiment, and drawing free body diagrams.  The kids are always excited to see us and are having a great time learning physics.

 

To contact us: