Performing Experiments for Force of Nature

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.

• Instructions for all labs will be available to enrolled students at the beginning of the course.
• Each student should perform the lab to the best of his or her ability as soon as possible in the week period before the chat session.
• Each student must then write up a lab report, which should contain the following sections (note that you should supply enough detail that I or any of your fellow students could duplicate your experiment or observations, assuming we can obtain the same materials you used):
  • your goal for observation, or the hypothesis you wish to test
  • a list of the materials you used
  • a description of the procedure you followed
  • a record of your observations or data, presented in an appropriate format your conclusions (i.e., did you support or disprove the hypothesis?)
  • at least one suggestion for how to alter the materials or procedure in order to improve the accuracy of your results.
• Lab reports must be posted in the Moodle Candle forum by 6pm EST of the evening before our chat session, so that all students have time to review each others' work.
• Students will respond with constructive criticism about the lab procedures, as well as the lab report content and style of presentation.
• Students should also post any questions they have about what happened in the lab and why, in the general class forum.

Lab Permission Forms

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

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.