General

[Heebs]

I'm teaching physics this year so I need a few good projects for the kids to work on. Its a boarding school so keep in mind that I dont have parents to go buy them crap every week, I need to order all this stuff in advance.

So far I have:
Egg drop
Mouse trap car
Catapault
Bridge

Any other ideas?

[Cale]

Parachute experiments are always fun. Test if different shapes of parachutes are more efficient.

[Fridaddy]

Paper airplane, both distance and aerobatics.
Mentos and Diet Coke, make nozzles and try for hight of spray. Or length at a 45 degree angle.
See what team can wash and wax the teachers car fastest.

[skiddish9999]

Air-plane flying test....That one was a fun one

[berzerker grizz]

Co2 racers are kind of interesting. The high school I went to had this a large part of physics grade, also a large school event.
Some info for you.
CO2 dragster - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Otherwise a pinewood derby is a less expensive idea.

Otherwise a science class I had made model rockets out of found materials.
paper towel tube, small bits of balsa wood out of the teachers home hobby shop, and a cheap launch pad from Wally world.

Could do the better mouse trap as well. I cant seem to remember the name of it, but the large devices the Mythbusters build to turn on a light switch/other simple task.

[Raion]

If i was to teach anything , It would be physics


what are somethings directly you need to cover?

[HaHaRoadKill]

physics of a paintball

[Walking_Target]

One of my favorites is a phenomenon involving a candle, a piece of construction paper and a few carefully cut slits.

Good way to teach about wave interference and so forth . I'll try to find the actual info on it in the morning.

[heinous]

we did egg drop with no parachutes allowed, nor fins. Basically it has to withstand a 2 story freefall at full speed with nothing to slow it down, and not exceed a certain volume in size, i failed

paper airplane is a bad idea. you can't fold one straight enough to measure distance, at least not with classroom supplies. I had to do it and I just folded a solid nosecone and threw the thing as hard as I could like a dart...

Some fun stuff my physics teacher had:
Make a boat with a pre-determined size of tin foil. The one holding the most pennies without sinking wins.

Line a wall with fans. Have students build a toy sail car that sails into the wind.

Probably out of your price range, as a class we got donated 2 leaf blowers, a 6X6 sheet of plywood, which we rounded into a circle and we bought a sheet of drop cloth to make a hovercraft out of those things. 1 student stands on it, teacher swings it around holding the blower wires, on tiled classroom floor.

This one is from Science Olympiad. I used to make bottle rockets out of 1 and 2 liter coke bottles. Winner was determined by flight duration. Eventually they changed the rules to disallow soft parachutes, I just made one that was a long dart and it floated down with a flight time of 19 seconds This can get dangerous though, even with 60psi they flew high, so I do not recommend this one. Just wanted to gloat

[glaman5266]

Originally Posted by Heebs

Egg drop

That's what I was going to suggest.
We did that. We were limited to using only straws, tape (any kind but duct tape), string, toothpicks, and popsicle sticks. I built a polyhedra of sorts and it worked pretty well.