Introduction
liyuchon
We developed this series of stay-at-home physics experiments to provide ideas for instructors to design hands-on physics activities for online courses. These experiments are developed and implemented for six physics courses at the Univerisity of Toronto Mississauga, namely PHY100 (the Magic of Physics), PHY136/PHY137 (Introductory Physics I & II), PHY146/PHY147 (Principles of Physics I & II), and PHY255 (Introduction to Biomedical Physics). We are focusing only on introductory physics courses because more advanced courses often require more sophisticated equipment that is not readily available at home.
For all the experiments developed in this project, we aim to cover important topics of physics with relatively cheap and easily accessible materials. We also try to reuse the materials for more than one experiment in a course, so that it is feasible for instructors to assemble low-cost lab kits and ship them to the students.
In an effort to make the experiments quantitative, many experiment activities are built around the freely accessible open-source app Phyphox. The Phyphox app can extract data from the sensors built in most smartphones, which allows the experiments to involve extensive data analysis that is comparable to traditional in-person experiments.
All the experiments in this project have been implemented in online courses at least once. Students’ feedback and teaching assistants’ feedback were used to improve the instruction manuals. We welcome more feedback from you!
Due to the limitation of time, it is inevitable that there are mistakes and typos in the instruction manuals. In that case, please accept our sincere apologies and let us know the mistakes by email (yuchong.li@utoronto.ca)! Many thanks for your time and help!
Have fun in physics at home,
Yuchong Li
Acknowledgment
This project is made possible with funding by the Government of Ontario and through eCampusOntario’s support of the Virtual Learning Strategy. To learn more about the Virtual Learning Strategy visit: https://vls.ecampusontario.ca.
