The Physics Classroom » Reasoning Center

Science and Reasoning Center - 1-D Kinematics

There are three 1-D Kinematic passages that target students' science reasoning abilities. They are ...

Kinematics

17 Questions

This passage includes a description of a ball tossed upward into the air. The description includes a dot diagram, a position-time graph, and a velocity-time graph. Questions target a student's ability to extract meaningful data from diagrams and graphs, to interpret graphs, and to make connections between the diagrams and graphs.

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Velocity-Time Graph

9 Questions

This passage describes four different experiments involving the use of a motion detector and the resulting velocity-time graphs. Ten different types of motion (fast, slow, movement towards and away from the detector, constant speed, changing speed, etc.) are contrasted in the experiments. Questions target a student's ability to interpret data, to compare and contrast the results of the various experiments, to use the results of the experiments to evaluate the validity of a conclusion, to identify the supporting evidence for a conclusion, and to reason towards appropriate conclusions when given the findings of an experiment.

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Stopping Distance

11 Questions

This passage presents data regarding the relationship between reaction time, car speed, reaction distance, braking distance, and total stopping distance. The data is presented in the form of a bar chart and a data table. Questions target a student's ability to recognize and use numerical patterns, to select relevant data from a graph or table, to combine information from two or more data presentations to answer questions, and to interpolate and extrapolate using the provided data.

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UPDATE: We have postponed this project due to the urgency of several others. We hope to resume work on it in the near future. Sorry.
TPC
7/17/2019

On the Resource CD:
A Resource CD is being prepared to assist classroom teachers in using this section of the website more effectively within their classrooms. The Physics Classroom hopes to release the CD during the Fall semester of of 2014.

The 1-D Kinematics section of the CD will include five different passages, including these three passages. The passages are accompanied by questions, answers with thorough explanations, and a table that associates each question with a specific science reasoning skill (or college readiness standard). Each passage includes considerably more questions than those presented here in the Science Reasoning Center. In addition to PDF files, the information on the CD is also available as Microsoft Word files, allowing teachers the ability to pick and choose questions from the large bank of questions associated with each passage.

More information about the CD can be found at the Resource CD page.