ILC HS Physics - Full Year

The 1st semester of this course consists of three units. 

• The first unit begins with students watching astronauts move around on the moon and noticing differences in motion compared to moving on Earth. They then build on prior knowledge of what causes objects to attract one another. After they collaborate on different types of attractive forces, they then explore what affects the force of attraction between objects: magnitude of charge and distance between interacting particles. 
• The second unit begins with students watching a video of a woodpecker colliding with a tree and comparing that with two football players colliding and making them wonder why football players get injured and woodpeckers do not. They move on into learning how to define and describe motion of objects. Students collect displacement and time data on moving objects and learn how this connects to speed/velocity of objects and how to represent the motion graphically. After students learn about velocity, they start learning about changing velocity and that this is referred to as acceleration. The graphs of displacement versus time and velocity versus time can be used to derive the acceleration of an object.
• The third unit begins with students watching a video of acrobats performing on what is known as a teeter board. Students are told to ask questions about how the teeter board works and they develop a driving question board. Then students use the prior knowledge developed in Unit 2 to analyze the motion of the acrobats who are performing. They look at velocity versus time graphs of each set of acrobats and draw conclusions about their motion from the graphs.

The 2nd semester of this course consists of three units.  
 

• In unit 1, Students answer the essential question “How have collisions with objects from space changed Earth in the past, and how could they affect our future?” Through a series of investigations students will look closely at meteors. Their impact on the Earth, the role an atmosphere or lack of atmosphere  plays on a falling object. Students will understand  what the Chicxulub Impactor was and what effect it had on the Earth. Students will consider the Earth gravitational pull on a fall object as well as an object’s orbit, path and Kepler's Laws. 
• In unit 2 , Students will answer the essential question “How do we use radiation in our lives, and is it safe for humans?”. Students will consider how energy transfers through different types of waves. Students will investigate electric and magnetic fields. Students will work with waves and matter. Students will look at wave distribution and the polarity of different substances. 
• In unit 3, Students will answer the essential question “Why do stars shine and will they shine forever? Students will investigate the idea of energy, matter and forces through the study of stars. Students will learn about guest stars, properties of stars, forces of stars,  the big bang, stability of stars, and supernovas.