Super Low Tech Lab

I have spent so much time trying to drag my labs back out of the 1990s and into the 1950s (see here for an explanation) that I have been neglecting my family and even my blogs.
I have decided to remedy that. I just spent a 3-day weekend with the family (it is very rare that my wife and I would have days off together), and now I am trying to figure out what to do this week. None of my demonstrations and labs that rely on PASCO can be used, so it's low tech on momentum for the standard class - I think we have some spring loaded carts that still work. I will load one down with some weights and see if a reasonable demo can get the point across. For honors... I don't know. I'll sleep on it and wing it in the morning. They probably need one last review of Newton's laws for linear motion anyway, and we can start circular motion on Wednesday.

But AP... that's the lowest tech class of them all, this week. They will spend tomorrow deriving an expression for the period of a pendulum, using 3 meters of string and various brass weights. I don't expect them to nail the whole thing in an hour, of course, but if they can figure out the general form of how the string length affects the period, and how the mass and amplitude do not, then I will declare them geniuses and go home happy.

And if you go to this link and click on the words "simple pendulum" at the very top, you might go home happy as well. Be amused by simple things... like the simple pendulum.