Online Reading for Physics....

I used a lot of online info for our physics class this year, so I wanted to pull it all together in one place.  Hopefully, most of these links will be valid for a while and helpful to others!

These are in order by the topics as we covered them throughout the year.  I didn't use online sources for absolutely every topic (electricity or optics, for example), but did use quite a few of them for other topics....

Bubbles:
http://bubbleology.com/BubbleologyFrame.html

http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/bubbles/internet_resources.html

http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/bubbles/bubbles.html

http://bubbles.org/

http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/explore/bubbles.htm

http://members.tripod.com/sharing_science/bubbles.html

http://www.lanl.gov/news/releases/archive/01-061.shtml

http://42explore.com/bubbl.htm

http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/explore/bubbles.html

http://members.tripod.com/sharing_science/bubbles.html
http://www.lanl.gov/news/releases/archive/01-061.shtml

http://42explore.com/bubbl.htm

More on Bubbles/Foams:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLTrD9LYQTs

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=new-theory-explains-the-p

http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~wiebke/PHYSICS/MY_PAPERS/SoftCondensedMatter.pdf

http://www.aquafoam.com/papers/Ouellette.pdf

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2003/09jun_foam/

http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemistryactivities/a/kidelephantdemo.htm

Simple Machines:
http://atlantis.coe.uh.edu/archive/science/science_lessons/scienceles1/finalhome.htm

http://www.mikids.com/Smachines.htm

Website to explore simple and then compound machines:
http://www.edheads.org/activities/simple-machines/index.htm

Archimedes’s Screw:
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Archimedes'_screw

http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~crorres/Archimedes/Screw/applications/Kinderdijk_screw_big.jpg

http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~crorres/Archimedes/Screw/Applications.html

http://www.experiment-resources.com/archimedes-screw.html

Compound Machine (Rube Goldberg):
http://www.edheads.org/activities/odd_machine/

http://www.fossweb.com/modules3-6/LeversandPulleys/index.html

About Rube Goldberg:
http://www.rubegoldberg.com/

Read about / look at examples of Rube Goldberg Machines:

http://www.mousetrapcontraptions.com/cool-machines-3.html

http://www.jacobshwirtz.com/RubeGoldberg/index.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhhGeDBsGA0&NR=1&feature=fvwp


Easy steps for making a Rube Goldberg device:

http://www.ehow.com/how_6609630_make-easy-rube-goldberg.html

http://www.wikihow.com/Build-a-Homemade-Rube-Goldberg-Machine

World record just set by Purdue University engineering dept. for most steps to blow up and pop a balloon (300):

http://www.gadgetbox.msnbc.msn.com/technology/gadgetbox/rube-goldberg-device-takes-300-steps-pop-balloon-686978

Gears:
http://www.exploratorium.edu/cycling/gears1.html

...and on the same topic of bicycles, here's more on wheels and axles, too:

http://www.exploratorium.edu/cycling/wheel1.html

Different types of gears:

http://www.mos.org/sln/Leonardo/InventorsToolbox.html

...and there's a quiz after they read this page:

http://www.mos.org/sln/Leonardo/GadgetAnatomy.html

And here's a very good page with lots of links to info on gears in general and clocks in particular. It also includes some activities:

http://www.fi.edu/time/Journey/Time/Escapements/escapemLG.html

Rader's Physics 4 Kids as a good all-round reading site:

http://www.physics4kids.com/


Force and Motion:

http://download.micron.com/pdf/education/lessonplans/machinesextension.pdf

http://teacherweb.com/MA/MountviewMiddleSchool/DawnSmith/photo1.aspx

http://www.ckcolorado.org/units/8th_grade/8_forcemotion.pdf

http://www.phschool.com/webcodes10/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.gotoWebCode&wcprefix=cgk&wcsuffix=3000
(goes with Prentice Hall Motion, Forces, and Energy book)

http://www.learner.org/interactives/parkphysics/coaster.html

http://glencoe.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0078778115/student_view0/unit6/chapter20/math_practice_2.html
(more related to the PH book)

Potential and Kinetic Energy:

http://www.eia.gov/kids/energy.cfm?page=about_forms_of_energy-basics

http://games.yahoo.com/blogs/unplugged/seven-amazing-domino-creations-232629590.html

A body (or bodies) in motion tend to stay in motion....

Newtonian Physics:

http://www.bitesizephysics.com/Resources/N's%203rd.pdf

Mechanical Waves:

http://www.kettering.edu/physics/drussell/Demos/waves-intro/waves-intro.html

http://www.kettering.edu/physics/drussell/Demos/waves/wavemotion.html

http://www.school-for-champions.com/science/sound.htm

http://www.physicsclassroom.com/Class/sound/u11l1c.cfm

Good Powerpoint all about waves:

www.greenville.k12.sc.us/eastside/simmons/docs/ps/Module%207.ppt

Activities to do:

http://science.k12flash.com/sound.html

Games and info on Einstein:

http://www.albert-einstein.org/.index6.html

Flashcards for review of waves:

http://quizlet.com/915979/waves-worksheet-flash-cards/

You can go through them online, too....

More info on waves for review:

http://mrskingsbioweb.com/worksheets/Waves.pdf

These sort of look like a powerpoint presentation in slide form....

Green flashes (light waves):

http://www.exo.net/~pauld/physics/atmospheric_optics/green_flash.html

Two online magnet quizzes:

http://www.myschoolhouse.com/courses/O/1/33.asp

http://www.softschools.com/quizzes/science/magnetism/quiz767.html

Info on magnets:

http://www.historyforkids.org/scienceforkids/physics/electricity/magnet.htm

Circuits:

http://courseweb.stthomas.edu/apthomas/SquishyCircuits/index.htm

Here's a neat little video to watch on the physics of baseball:

http://www.teachersdomain.org/resource/kqed09.sci.phys.maf.kqedbaseball/?utm_source=March++2012+TD+Newsletter&utm_campaign=April+TD+News&utm_medium=email

...and this one is on the physics of sailing:

http://www.teachersdomain.org/resource/kqed09.sci.phys.maf.kqedsailing/?utm_source=March++2012+TD+Newsletter&utm_campaign=April+TD+News&utm_medium=email

Robotics:

http://aboutroboticstechnology.blogspot.com/2010_07_01_archive.html

Here's info on building various Lego robots:

http://www.robotsforkids.com/
 
Here's another sort of "robot." It's a balloon powered nano-rover:

http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/nanorover/en/

Here's something to do with those bubbles (a bubble powered rocket):

http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/pop-rocket/en/

More info from NASA on robotics:

http://robotics.arc.nasa.gov/edu/educators.php

And here's a site you can use to learn about robotic engineering:

http://prime.jsc.nasa.gov/ROV/

Here's info on artificial intelligence:

http://www.pitara.com/discover/5wh/online.asp?story=176

http://encyclopedia.kids.net.au/page/ar/Artificial_intelligence

Hope at least some of these are helpful!

Regena

Week 36, 2012 - Last Week of Homeschooling....

Our homeschooling time came to an end this week.  It is both a sad and exciting time for us all, I think.  Someone in our area scheduled a trip to Salato on Thursday and it has been a favorite trip for us over the years, so I thought it appropriate that we end on that note.  This is a sort of free demonstration area set up at the headquarters of our state fish and wildlife offices.  They have on display lots of native species, both indoors and out, of both plants and animals.  They also have fishing lakes on site that they keep stocked most of the time (although the boys caught nothing on the day we were there - but then they were trying to fish with nothing but corn kernels)....  We attended a birds of prey talk and then toured the facility before fishing in the afternoon.

     


     


    


Our public schools got out on Thursday, and our summer neighborhood swim team started on Friday, so my son elected to finish up some work earlier in the week, and he has continued to finish some odds and ends of reading through this weekend in order to conclude his last day's work.

Here's a look at what we worked on during our last week:

He had his last Algebra II class.  His instructor gave him a list of theorems and a compass to use in geometry next year.  I thought that was very sweet of her!  She gave him a set of problems, along with the answers, that he could work on as he chose.  He finished most of them up last week.  I need to get a more advanced math calculator for him in order for him to finish up the last few over the summer.

He finished up the Spanish workbook that I've used this year as fill-in around his outside class.  It included a lot of vocab and grammar practice work and work in writing complete sentences in Spanish.

He finished up his Latin Grammar I book.

He finished up his review in Vocabulary for the College Bound by taking an online test over chapter 3.  He had been reviewing lists from last year for several weeks.

He finished up work in both his Easy Grammar texts.

He completed some short writing assignments for me related to technology and our use of it now and in the future.  We had already been tying in current events to our history readings for the past several weeks, so this week we looked a lot at how technology is changing our world and speculated about how it will continue to change in future.  Our science and history studies were tied together this week.

The workbook pages I used for these exercises were from a book entitled The Basic Needs of Man, Artman and Grim.



Here is a synopsis of the book from Alibris (although it is out of stock there):

"This book celebrates the progress man has made in the past millenniums as he struggled to meet his basic needs. Students are asked to think about their basic needs as they exist today and as they prepare for an unknown future. As the next millennium passes, will the basic needs of man change or remain the same? Students are asked to think about progress-past, present, and future."           

In our little science class at home, the boys got together one more time and created a different robot.  They chose a version that has spinning parts.  This kit is an old one, but if you can still find it on the Internet, it certainly was a hit at our house!  (I posted a link to it last week.)

My son worked with some micro-planes from a kit, finished up a little flight workbook we got at the USAF Museum, and completed a K'nex kit on bridge building.  He also read Kingfisher's Boats, Ships, Submarines and Other Floating Machines. 

This is a new cover for the micro-planes kit, but it looks like it still includes the same planes....

This is the smallest K'nex bridge kit I can find available at this time.  Our kit was actually put out by Scholastic for K'nex and was even smaller than this, although it looks like it came with a very similar work/info booklet....  I've had it a long time.  If you are building a library of items to use for school work with your children, it's not a bad idea to subscribe to Scholastic circulars for all ages for a while and watch the items that come up for sale each month (I'd subscribe to all grade levels as you never know which circular they may choose for specific sales)....



He continued reading through the daily devotional book we've been using this spring.  I think that he's going to keep it out and continue with it through the summer.

In literature, he completed Huck Finn and read I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov.  We also listened to some of the Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury, on CD.

    










For our history topic of the week, the new millennium, we read from Kingfisher and Usborne.  We read excerpts from an Enchantment of the World volume:  Afghanistan, and looked back at the Gulf War using First Facts About American Heroes (re: Schwarzkopf) and the Encyclopedia of the US at War.

My son completed his readings in SOTW and Volume 10 of Hakim's series.

He read I Want to be an Astronaut, Stephanie Maze, and I read from a series entitled Future Files, by Copper Beach Books.  The volumes we covered were Future World and Emergency: Planet Earth. 

     






















He finished up his last day of bowling and they threw a pizza party for all the kids participating.  Each person also received a nice trophy and some other items.

We dropped of his registration info at the private school he will attend and obtained info on soccer, volunteer work, and summer reading so that he can get started on work he needs to do this summer in those areas.

I have begun cleaning out my school room and listing books for sale.  I'm trying to pull together things I want to keep for potential future classes I might teach (at least until I decide what I want to be when I grow up, LOL....)  I am trying to get set for a couple of classes I already have scheduled, and  weekly tutoring in language arts/geography/history for another student.  I will probably be posting some of that info as I move along in my preparations.  I also want to put together a post of online links I used for physical science this year, as there were a ton of them!

Happy summer everyone!

Regena

Week 35 - 2012 - One More Week to Go!

Since we are continuing to wrap up outside classes, as well as work at home, there's not much to report save for our continued reading.  I think that I neglected to mention some of the books we have been reading related to our week 33 study of Australia and Oceania.  I have been reading aloud from Australia, Antarctica, and the Pacific, Kate Darian-Smith; and Hawai'i, Martin Hintz.









           


My son read Islands of the Pacific Rim and Their People, Macdonald.













This week, we have continued with work related to the presidents, civics and government topics.  I used a voting manual I've had around for a while to talk to him about ways that we can inform ourselves about the voting records of candidates before voting for them.  He has been reading through the information about the more recent presidents (from Reagan forward) in Scholastic's Encyclopedia of The Presidents and Their Times, David Rubel.

He read the last chapter in SOTW IV this week, and is reading from chapter 41 to the end of Volume 10 of Hakim.

We covered the period of the 1990's into 2000 this week, focusing on human rights issues.  In addition to reading from our standards:  the Haywood Atlas, Usborne Atlas, Kingfisher Encyclopedia, Remember the Ladies, and Haywood's Atlas of Past Times, I also read Hillary Clinton's speech to the UN Conference on Women from Words That Built a Nation. 

I read aloud a simple, children's version of the universal declaration of human rights adopted by the UN.  It was prepared by Amnesty International.  We discussed at length the good intent of the document and the problems caused by the simplicity of the language when applied to real life situations around the world....

I read a chapter on Bosnia and Kosovo from Freedom on Fire: Human Rights Wars and America's Response, John Shattuck.  It was interesting that General Mladic has been in the news this week and we discussed the lengthy time it has taken to bring some war criminals to justice.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mladic-trial-20120517,0,6653722.story?track=icymi

On the science front, the boys finished the robot they were building and were so enthralled that they wanted to build another, so I agreed to let them meet again next week in attempt to get another one done.  Here are some pics of their current creation:

My office is currently full of books that I'm going to be selling as soon as we're finished with school and I have time to list them.  Once we conclude, I've got to make another run through the school room to see if I can cull more books.  I'm trying to clear the room enough to put a large table in there so that I can hold classes for homeschoolers there next year.  I feel like I'm swimming in books right now!

Regena