What do Advanced Placement Physics class members do for fun? They spend their class time in a lab with science teacher Chris Odom tackling a projectile experiment to determine if they can predict the landing site of a steel ball set in motion at an arbitrary angle by a projectile launcher.

George School seniors Gabrielle Bohr, Shu-Fu (Sam) Chang, Sara Manetta, Adriana Philip, Daniel Seabrooks, and Palmer Trolli first measured the initial speed of a steel ball shot from a projectile launcher as well as the ball’s horizontal and vertical displacements. Then they used the speed and displacement calculations to determine where the ball would land when shot at some random angle.

“The math isn’t too hard,” explained Chris while discussing the lab. “The calculations, however, were difficult in their complexity. The errors inherent in these real-world experiments are usually quite large.”

The students were surprised when they never missed any of their calculated targets even when they designed increasingly difficult trajectories. “We were amazed that all of the steel balls hit their intended targets the first time, every time,” enthused Chris, who recorded the results on video.

George School offers fifteen courses to prepare students for the following AP exams: Studio Art, Biology, Calculus AB, Chemistry, English Literature, English Language, French, Latin, Physics C, Spanish, Statistics, and U.S. History. In May 2009, 119 students took 158 AP exams. Seventy-four percent of these exams (116 total) received scores of 3 or better. Juniors and seniors may enroll in AP courses with departmental permission.