When I was a student teacher, I had a great mentor who was teaching physics for many years. One thing that I really loved about his class, is that with every example question he would make it into some kind of funny scenario. For example, when we were learning about free fall, instead of doing a normal question like how long will this rock take to hit the ground. He would say, “A BABY has just been dropped out a 8m high window, and is falling into a pit of FIREE, how many seconds do you have to save the baby until it BURNS ALIVE!!!! Yes maybe it was a bit dramatic, and sometimes he went a little too far with his example questions, but you were always on the edge of your seat excited for the next example problem.
Physics has many word problems, something students usually don’t like. Why not make these word problems fun and exciting?
I started to do the same thing as my mentor in my own classroom, but I wanted to go one step further. I wanted each chapter that I taught to have a series of example questions that tie into each other and ultimately tell a story. This takes a lot of work, but it’s something my students always enjoy and they can’t wait to do the next example problem.
Here is an animated story I made with a former student on the chapter of projectile motion:
