Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Guide for Teachers: Creating IB Physics Graphs



Update: The New IB Physics Graphing Template for the 2016+ Syllabus is out! Follow this link to find out more!

All the links below are now OUT OF DATE!

Download the IB Physics Graph Template

Are you a student? See my post on Creating Perfect IB Physics Graphs.

It is difficult enough for students to understand the purpose of creating linearized graphs with max and min slopes. It is made doubly difficult by the laborious processes involved in generating these graphs by hand or with ill-suited software.

To streamline the process and allow students to focus on the meaning of the information in their graphs, I developed an Excel template for creating perfect IB Physics Graphs with minimum and maximum slopes. Just fire up Excel:

  1. Type in your coordinate pairs, and
  2. Type in the uncertainties for your measurements
As you enter data, your graphs are rendered on-the-fly. This gives students instant feedback on the shape of their data, and the appropriateness of their graph and data. In this way, students can graph their data easily while they are still collecting their data! Doing so allows them to easily see if their data is making sense and if they are therefore on the right track.

Here's what the result of my efforts looks like.

IB Physics Graph Template with Max and Min Slope
If you think this tool might be useful in your classroom, you can purchase a school-wide license for this template using the Google Checkout Gadget below. Just complete the purchase and you will be directed to the download location. Once you have the file, you can distribute it to every student and teacher in your school! The IB Graph template is now free! Download here.

This template requires Microsoft Excel

Saturday, July 31, 2010

Creating Perfect Graphs with Minimum and Maximum Slope for IB Physics IA's

Update: The New IB Physics Graphing Template for the 2016+ Syllabus is out! Follow this link to find out more!

All the links below are now OUT OF DATE!

Download the IB Physics Graph Template

Are you a Teacher? See my Guide to Teachers: Creating Perfect IB Physics Graphs.

I've been working on an Excel Template that will allow you to easily create ideal graphs for IB Physics IA's. Some of the features I'm trying to incorporate are:

1) Automatically draw the correct error bars based on the uncertainty of the measurement
2) Automatically draw the maximum and minimum slope based on the error bars
3) Fill in the graphs on-the-fly so you can see how the data is developing as you take measurements.

The template I'm building requires Microsoft Excel

Graphing Template for IB Courses with Max and Min Slopes

This template can be purchased for $2.00 USD using the Google Checkout Gadget below. Complete the purchase and you will be directed to a download link for the template. The IB Graph template is now free! Download here.