Personalize Physics Problems with Student Names!

 

Surprise your students by handing them physics problems in which they are the stars! Making your students characters in their physics problems captures their attention and engages them in reading the problems as they search for their names and the names of their friends.

For years, I have been using physics practice problems with student names woven into the "stories" to provide a little entertainment while teaching Newton's laws of motion. After giving lessons on the basics of Newton's First, Second, and Third Laws, I give them problem sets in which every student makes a cameo appearance. Here is an example of one of the problems:

Liam and Yosi are installing a monument to the 8th-grade class in front of the Museum School. The monument needs to be moved to the left, so they put it on a frictionless surface and pull it along with a rope. Together they pull with a force of 500 N. The monument’s mass is 100 kg. What is the monument’s acceleration?

I am able to use the same basic problems each year but tweak them a bit by changing the students' names along with some details in the problems. For example, I might change a sport from baseball to softball. I try to create funny problems or those that incorporate students' interests. I enjoy making characters in the problems that match the different personalities in my class, and I have fun placing students in the various roles each year.

I have found that using these personalized physics problems is especially useful at times when students are feeling less engaged, such as when we near the end of the school year. My eighth-grade students are excited about graduating and moving on to their next big step of entering high school. This year the "senioritis", or "eighth graditis", has been particularly pronounced. I have actually heard students counting down the days until graduation! This is all very normal and to be expected, but as a teacher, I have to have something in my back pocket to keep them interested. I honestly didn't know how well the personalized physics problems would go over with my current eighth-grade crowd, but they actually really liked them! 

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