Acceleration
Forces and Motion

Things you'll need to decide on as you plan: Accumulating Changes

Teaching Guidance for 14-16 Supporting Physics Teaching

Bringing together two sets of constraints

Focusing on the learners:

Distinguishing–eliciting–connecting. How to:

  • develop precise descriptions, building on everyday experiences
  • exploit the availability of technology such as videocameras to tell stories about motion and recording of motion

Teacher Tip: These are all related to findings about children's ideas from research. The teaching activities will provide some suggestions. So will colleagues, near and far.

Focusing on the physics:

Representing–noticing–recording. How to:

  • talk helpfully about clock time and duration
  • separate instantaneous from average
  • emphasise that all motion is relative motion
  • exploit common patterns in thinking
  • be clear about what is simply a convention, albeit a very useful one
  • exploit clear diagrammatic conventions

Teacher Tip: Connecting what is experienced with what is written and drawn is essential to making sense of the connections between the theoretical world of physics and the lived-in world of the children. Don't forget to exemplify this action.

Acceleration
appears in the relation F=ma a=dv/dt a=-(w^2)x
is used in analyses relating to Terminal Velocity
can be represented by Motion Graphs
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