zlacker

>>lxm+(OP)
> give students a five-day grace period to turn in work

I don't see how that changes anything. It just means the homework deadline is 5 days later.

> eliminate zeroes in grade books

Meaning if one does well on the first assignment, the rest of the semester can be ignored. A savvy student, once they achieved an A, will be motivated to not turn in any more assignments or tests.

> and re-do tests

Once you know what is on the test, it isn't really a test anymore.

>>Walter+YJ
I mean allowing multiple redos for tests doesn’t seem awful. Especially if the test questions can be mixed up. My physics and calculus classes did this with online software & I mastered those subjects pretty heavily towards the end. I understand this can’t be repeated for all subjects but the general idea doesn’t seem like the worse

>>ahevia+tK
It's a lot of work to prepare a good physics exam, partly because you don't want to pose questions that the students are already familiar with.

>>Walter+dL
At what level? Undergraduate physics / secondary honors track, sure. But in MS physical science and the intro physics HS class I'm familiar with-- doing simple, well-understood kinematics problems is where a whole lot of test effort is spent (while trying to build intuition and process that the best students will be able to use for harder problems).

I mean, it's fun to ask "trick" questions, like what happens to a helium balloon in a turning car, etc, but I wouldn't assess based on them. If students are going to be engineers or heavily use physics, they can go to AP physics and college physics classes and draw complicated free body diagrams and set up big equations.

>>mlyle+rO
> like what happens to a helium balloon in a turning car

Is that really a "trick" question? The balloon drifts to the underside of the roof on the inside of the turn.

> I wouldn't assess based on them

I would. I expect physics students to get past their knee-jerk intuitions and think about the principles they've been taught. Otherwise what's the point of learning physics?

>>Walter+SQ
> Is that really a "trick" question?

Sure-- per a sibling comment of mine, it tricks half of freshmen at Caltech. Throwing it at a random 8th or 9th grader can be expected to be even worse.

> I would. I expect physics students to get past their knee-jerk intuitions and think about the principles they've been taught. Otherwise what's the point of learning physics?

In 8th grade?

A) To learn a little bit about the world works

B) to get a whole lot of practical experience with dimensional analysis, applying formulae, and drawing diagrams of simple systems

C) to begin to decide if deep study on this track might be for you, hopefully building a little bit of wonder that might inspire you to study it more deeply and pay attention to physics in the world around you.

>>mlyle+5V1
> it tricks half of freshmen at Caltech

They are freshman, i.e. untrained minds. Me, I probably would have failed that question at the time, too. Such a question wouldn't have been on a test, however, as test questions always involved a lot of math.

I remember one inglorious physics midterm exam that over half of the students flunked. The prof had some angry words for the class.

> In 8th grade?

Sure, if you'd laid the groundwork in class.