- #1
Gersty
- 47
- 1
Physics is pretty easy to contextualize in a kid's everyday life, but it breaks down at a certain point. Its easy to reference the motion of cars, roller-coasters, falling objects, etc... But things like air-resistance always sort of get in the way. For example: A recent news item told of a tape measure that fell from a 50 story building and hit and killed an unfortunate worker below. My students were very interested in this story for obvious reasons, and we were in the middle of a unit on projectiles so they spent some time trying to calculate how long the tape measure was falling and how hard it must have hit the person below. What we teach in a typical high school class doesn't really get us far enough. Has anyone found success in tackling problems like this without recourse to calculus and higher level physics concepts? I feel that if we could show kids applications of physics that give us real world results that don't depend on a friction-less vacuum, we might interest a few more future physicists.