Looking for lab experiments for a High School Physics class

[PaulHSteacher]

I teach high school physics and I am looking for simple labs for my students. The school is moving to a new location in a year or two and our equipment is dismal. I want labs that are simple. Earlier this week, I had the students perform the reaction time test by having one student drop a meter stick and a lab partner catch the meter stick. Using falling distance travelled, they were able to calculate reaction time. This simple free fall experiment only required a meter stick. I am looking for other lab experiments that are at the same level for my students. Any suggestions.

 

[Borg]

My first thought is to look in the Instructables website. A quick check show that they have a section devoted to teachers - https://www.instructables.com/teachers/. If you perform a search for 'physics', it returns results with varying degrees of equipment requirements.

 

[kuruman]

My first thought was, have you considered using a smartphone physics app?

Advantages
1. All high-school students have smartphones.
2. No equipment budget is needed.
3. Good excuse to bring smartphones to class in schools where they are banned.

Disadvantage
Using a smart phone a smartphone in school for something other than physics. It can be remedied by having students perform their experiments outside class and report their findings in class.

Look at https://phyphox.org/experiments for ideas. Shown below is just a couple of simple experiments from the site. There are many more.

Inelastic collision
Determine the initial height and loss of energy of a bouncing ball.
This experiment uses the sound of each bounce to retrieve its timing and calculates the values by assuming that the ball loses the same portion of energy on each bounce.

Centrifugal Acceleration
Explore the relation of angular velocity and centrifugal acceleration using the gyroscope and the accelerometer. (For example when putting your phone into a salad spinner.)

 

[Steve4Physics]

... This simple free fall experiment only required a meter stick. I am looking for other lab experiments that are at the same level for my students. Any suggestions.

From what you have said, it sounds like the students are working at an introductory level.

You might need to improvise a bit but here are a few simple experiments...

1. Find an object’s unknown mass using a ‘see-saw’ balance (e.g. a metre rule resting on pivot). This requires known masses and use of the principle of moments. If you don’t have enough standard masses you can use low-value coins of known mass.

2. A sloping ramp (say a long piece of wood) can be used for measuring the coefficient of static friction between various materials and the wood. Simply measure the angle (or calculate it using trig’) at which slipping starts.

3. Slightly more advanced, experiments with a pendulum offer possibilities from the simple to the more complex. E.g.
- the effect of the mass of the ‘bob’ on the period;
- the effect of the pendulum’s length on the period;
- measuring ‘g’ using a pendulum.
Edit: note, small amplitudes are needed for these experiments,