News — Physics Teaching

Energy never disappears — it just changes form. That sentence sounds simple until your students stare at a roller coaster problem and ask why the ball doesn't make it back to the same height. A well-designed energy conservation activity closes that gap faster than any lecture ever will. This post gives you concrete classroom-tested ideas for teaching conservation of energy in your high school physics class. You'll see how to frame the concept, which activities build the deepest understanding, how to connect it to NGSS standards, and how to layer in review so students don't lose the thread by test...

Most physics teachers find out students are lost on momentum after the test. Physics exit tickets flip that timeline — the last 3 minutes of class become your early-warning system, and you get the data while you can still do something about it. This post breaks down exactly how to build high-leverage exit tickets for physics, what questions actually reveal misconceptions (versus just checking whether kids did the reading), and how to make the whole system take less than 5 minutes of class time. What Makes a Physics Exit Ticket Actually Useful A generic exit ticket asks, "What did you...

Your students walk into physics class on day one carrying one question: Is this going to be worth my time? A well-designed physics icebreaker activity answers that question in the first 15 minutes — before you've said a word about Newton or velocity. Here's what actually works: icebreakers that sneak physics concepts in while students are busy laughing, competing, or building something. No forced "two truths and a lie." No awkward name circles. Just activities that make students feel curious and connected at the same time. Why Standard Icebreakers Fail in Physics Class Generic icebreakers — the kind that belong...

The first 5 minutes of class decide everything. If your physics students walk in, sit down, and immediately have something to do — a quick question on the board, a weird scenario to think through, a number to figure out — the whole period runs better. That's the whole idea behind physics bell ringer activities, and they work. This post gives you a practical toolkit: what makes a good physics bell ringer, 15 ready-to-use prompts organized by unit, tips for turning that 5-minute warm-up into actual assessment data, and how to build bell ringers into a consistent classroom system. Whether...