Alliance for Physics Excellence: Four Step Active Learning in Alabama High Schools

The Alliance for Physics Excellence (APEX) project is comprised of several components, each with its own subset of goals relating to the overarching goal of transforming secondary physics education in Alabama. One of the goals of the APEX is to provide teacher training to increase the depth and breadth of content knowledge and pedagogy infused teaching with instructional technology. Many of the laboratory activities performed during the APEX professional development training deal with the relationship among variables. For example, the relationship between the distance an object falls and the time it takes to fall. Rather than taking a single reading to verify an equation given in textbook, the students work in teams to make several measurements of the times for several different distances. The data is then analyzed graphically. The analysis starts with a mathematical statement based on the graph, and then the variables and constants are identified as it relates to the specific measurements. This results in a general relationship that summarizes the data and can be used to solve problems for similar situations. This video was created by Dr. Marius Schamschula, one of the co-principal investigators on the project. Mohan Aggarwal is the principal investigator of this NSF project (DUE 1238192) Alliance for Physics Excellence at Alabama A&M University. For further information please consult our website: http://alapex.org