Lab Work

AP Physics is a lab-based class. Roughly one-quarter of our time will be spent in teacher-conducted, student-conducted teacher-directed, or student-conducted student-directed laboratory activities.

Lab safety

It is essential that the classroom remains a safe place for all people at all times. Specific safety concerns will be addressed by the teacher and discussed as a group each time we do a lab activity. Please also read, sign, and obtain a guardian signature of this lab safety contract and turn it in to your teacher (you may disregard sections about handling chemicals or live specimens, as those do not apply to this class).

Lab journals

Professional scientists maintain accurate and detailed records of all the work they do as they conduct research. We will do the same in this class. Typically, this documentation is done in what is known as a laboratory journal, which is usually a sewn (not spiral-bound) notebook, such as a composition notebook. They actually sell special laboratory notebooks with graph paper and carbon paper copies to turn in, but we probably don't need something so sophisticated. Our lab work will be completed in a lab journal of your choosing for the following reasons:

    1. Professional scientists generally use lab journals. This is a science class, so it makes sense to emulate the professionals.

    2. The college board (the company that runs the AP program) recommends the use of lab journals in all AP science classes.

    3. You will likely be expected to use a lab journal in college, so getting used to that now will be helpful later.

    4. Depending on the school you go to, you may be required to submit a lab journal for review before you'll be awarded credit for any courses based on your AP exam score. This is done to verify that you completed a laboratory-based physics class.

A few notes for our uses of lab journals in class:

    • This should be a separate notebook from where you do notes, practice, homework, etc. This way, when someone is reviewing it later, we aren't asking them to sift through all of our other work to find the lab parts (I doubt they'd have time to do that, anyway).

    • I don't have a strong preference regarding the type of lab journal you use. You may want to go with a composition notebook, just to be consistent with requirements in other classes or potentially your future college science classes.

    • We will graph in nearly every experiment. All graphs are to be done on graph paper. If your lab notebook does not have graph paper, you'll need to get some graph paper to use, then plan on taping your graphs into your lab journal.

    • Your lab journals will be inspected as you work in them to ensure you're doing things thoroughly and in a manner that will earn you college credit when someone else examines them. They will NOT be included in your grade for this class. I view our lab work as learning activities, not as assessments. I expect you NOT to know about the things we are experimenting on, which is why we conduct the experiments. I expect you NOT to know how to complete a lab journal when you start, so I will give you feedback as you work so you can improve. The skills you develop in lab activities will be assessed in class and on the AP exam, but the lab journals themselves will not be graded.

More information about lab journal entries can be found here.

My philosophy on labs

Experimentation is how we learn in science. Many of you have never been exposed to a class in which experimentation and analysis of results is done in the level of detail that we will employ here. For the experiments we do in class, this level of detail may seem to be overkill at times. It is my hope, though, that working in this way will give you some sense of the rigor required of scientific studies. There is a great deal of creativity and dedication required to design and implement experiments that will yield persuasive results, and we just don't get that sense from the "conduct three trials and write a conclusion" model that is sometimes used in schools to make time for the vast amount of content that must be presented. If you gain nothing from this class but respect for what it means to have a scientific study indicating a certain conclusion, I will be satisfied. Of course, learning some general physics material and how it affects your day-to-day life would be a good step, too!