My name is Ziad Shaker and i am the Physics and Chemistry Teacher at Irving ISD. I have taught Paul Hewitt's Conceptual Physics book back in 2004 and enjoyed it. I am teaching the Principles of Technology course for the first time this year (2009-2010) and i see similarities in its approach to the Hewitt book with the obvious difference of the real-life applications emphasis it offers which i like.

I am enjoying foremost the laboratory portion of the course which i see as offering students real-life hands on applications of Physics which they enjoy. My students will handle motors, batteries, and build circuits for the first time in their lives and i am looking forward to them using the laser gun at the end of the year.

My tip is: don't be afraid of doing the labs yourself. Once you start you will get alot more comfortable with the equipment and the setup. The best thing to do is to do the setups yourself that way you are able to locate the different pieces of equipment for the students and help them in the setip. I would suggest instead of trying to find the equipment off of the list of equipment to tell students to use the picture as their reference when assembling the different parts of the experiment.

Weblinks:

I was unable to find in the Principles of Technology book any discussion of projectile motion which our district requires as part of our curriculum. It also happens to be one of the hardest topics of our curriculum for the students who struggle with it. This is a great weblink that my student found that allows you to plug in numbers and solve any projectile problem using the online webpage effortlessly:

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Hbase/traj.html