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[Phys-L] sharing an activity on free-body diagrams



Seasons greetings from Finland!

Thanks Phil for nice set of exercises!

I have been working on FBDs with my high school class and I agree that FBDs are among the most difficult topics to master for kids (and often for their teacher, too).

I wanted to share some of the material with you - I use drawings and photographs of objects and sometimes let the students to use laptops to draw the forces. They seem to enjoy working in pairs and trying to find relevant forces. I can quickly evaluate or comment their work and give a different exercise to follow.

I have found it useful to give a pair of FBDs at the same time. There is an example in the following link of the traditional car pushing a lorry dilemma, where you have to draw an FBD for both vehicles. Or you might give a pair where the movement is different, or slope etc. This enhances the discussion on how small variations change the forces.

http://www.peda.net/veraja/kuopio/lyseonlukio/kurssit/fysiikka/opetus4/voimakuvioita

Kauko Kauhanen
Kuopion Lyseon lukio high school
Kuopio Finland
email: kauko.kauhanen@kuopio.fi

Hi All,
I gave my students this assignment today:

http://www.holmdel.k12.nj.us/faculty/pkeller/word%20files/circular%20motion%20free%20body%20diagrams.pdf

We have not started to discuss this material yet, so this was their
first look. And I must say, I enjoyed listening to them working in
groups to puzzle this out. After about 20 minutes, I gave them a hint:
I revealed that the pairs all have the same free body diagrams.

Mostly, I am sharing because my students seemed to enjoy working on
these and they certainly discussed them enthusiastically. So if any of
you can use this, feel free. But also, there were two that gave the
most trouble. One I expected, but the other surprised me. I'll let you
guess...

Phil

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