Physics students to take Great America trip

Courtesy of Scott Pflaumer

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Meena Gudapati

Physics teacher Scott Pflaumer does a demo to illustrate sound waves traveling through a pathway. Students in physics will take a trip to Great America to apply skills they learned this school year.

Students in Physics and Honors Physics will take a trip to Great America on May 15 to apply physics concepts to various rides and scenarios.

“We go to Great America to obviously test some of the physics we learned about in class to see a real world example,” physics teacher Scott Pflaumer said. “I think that it’s also kind of an unofficial freshman physics trip since all of the other classes have trips for the year.”

The problems will focus around energy, circular motion and dynamics, topics which were covered in the physics classes.

“The main lab we do focuses on thinking about how you feel at different points in if you’re cresting a hill or going into a valley, if the [gravitational accelerations] are less than one or greater than one, if you feel lighter or heavier than usual and what’s the reason for that,” Pflaumer said.

Anamika Kannan (9) expressed interest in the coming trip.

“I’m really excited and I’m glad that we get to spend time with our friends and hang out and at the same time learn about physics on fun roller coaster rides,” she said.

Busses will depart from the upper school campus at 8:30 a.m. on Friday and will return at 4 p.m.

This piece was originally published in the pages of The Winged Post on May 13, 2015.