Labs
Lab assignments for this course are not optional — they are the point of the course! Students perform one major lab exercise each week and need to set aside a regular time for completing their lab work and writing up their reports. Please take this into consideration if your student is planning other activities, such as a travel or summer camp, which may make performing experiments on a regular basis impossible.
For safety reasons, both you and your parents must read the safety procedures before starting the lab sequence. Parents of minor students must sign and send a copy of the lab permission letter to me before I can accept any lab reports from their student.
Lab equipment may be borrowed from schools or purchased. Most physics principles can be demonstrated using household equipment; measuring these phenomena accurately gets trickier, and that's where we have to be the most inventive. However, if you are willing to make do with "home" accuracy instead of "lab grade" equipment, you can still learn the priniciples of physics...and remember: most of our household equipment such as voltmeters are better than the ones used by the original scientists who discovered these principles. If you want more accurate equipment, you should check my growing list of mail order suppliers.
© 2005 - 2024 This course is offered through Scholars Online, a non-profit organization supporting classical Christian education through online courses. Permission to copy course content (lessons and labs) for personal study is granted to students currently or formerly enrolled in the course through Scholars Online. Reproduction for any other purpose, without the express written consent of the author, is prohibited.