Outcomes:

After completing this class, students should be able to:

• The student will demonstrate acquired analytical problem solving skills and apply them to problems from different topic areas. The student will demonstrate this objective when they:
• Gather and process data
• Classify and organize the information according to inherent regularities
• Identify properties or characteristics as being important or unimportant (relevant or irrelevant)
• Define the problem
• Represent the problem graphically, verbally or mathematically
• Translate from one type of representation to another
• Decompose the problem into constituent parts
• Conduct the actions identified above and assemble the solution
• Present the solution (construct a written or verbal synthesis)
• The student will propose and refine physical models based on observation, discussion with other observers, and physical reasoning
• The student will demonstrate the ability to apply general science principles from the three topic areas
• Ability to generalize rules learned in one area to unfamiliar but similar settings
• Ability to apply principles to problems found in every day workplace and home settings.
• The student will demonstrate the ability to apply proportional reasoning to numerical problems.
• The student will demonstrate an understanding of the concept of the light ray as a physical model and draw ray diagrams as tools for the description of observations of optical phenomena and for the analysis of optical systems
• The student will demonstrate an understanding of fundamental elements of current electricity. In particular the student will demonstrate the ability to
• Recognize the role of the completed circuit and interconnecting wires
• Be able to distinguish between the flow of “stuff” in a circuit and the potential drop that is associated with this flow.
• Associate Ohms law as the proportion between these concepts
• Apply the above elements to predict the outcome of changes made to elementary circuits
• Apply the above elements to trouble shoot faults in home and office electrical connections
• The student will understand the concepts of potion, velocity, acceleration
• The student will interpret graphs of position, velocity, acceleration, and relate these to the motion of every day objects
• The student will understand the role of vectors to describe position, velocity, and acceleration
• The student will be able to make elementary vector computations