Review for:Kinetic Books Virtual Physics Lab: Firing a cannon: Calculating projectile motion

posted: on November 13, 2006 at 9:00AM

Physics

Motion in two dimensions and projectile motion

My learning goal was to give the students hands on experience determining the relationship between horizontal and vertical components of an object in projectile motion. In this virtual lab, they are able to derive the formula for the range of a projectile, which I have found is a challenge in the regular curriculum.

Honors or Advanced, Intro or Regular

Students were assigned to work in pairs on the lab. As the progressed, they were given more and more complexities in the simulation. Initially, it was just vertical motion, then horizontal component was added, then they actually had to apply this knowledge to defeat their partners in battle.

Provides visualization or animation, Provides a virtual lab

I really like this particular lab. I find it leads the students by the hand through the steps necessary to see that projectile motion is a combination of uniform motion in the horizontal direction and accelerated motion in the vertical direction, and that these two motions are independent (except for their time). I have explained this many times over the years and have shown the students different apparatus that shows this, but there are some deep-held misconceptions about this that need to be erased and this seems to reach them.

While using the labs, the students are excited and involved. Because they are competing against each other (or the computer), they actually have to apply what they have learned to succeed. I rarely see students this engaged in labs.

While the lab is engaging and involving to the students, I do tend to find they like to jump ahead to the fun parts, rather than going through it step-by-step. The questions asked in the lab have some odd phrasing that can trip up the students. I would like to re-write them some year. There is supposed to be a feature so that they can save their results as they go along, but it doesnt work on my computers (for some reason), so I have them type all their answers in Word. And the simulations use Java and for some reason this tends to make the computers crash with some regularity. I urge the students to back up frequently, but some have lost pages of work.