Additional Crime Scenes for Projectile Motion Unit

Building students' ability to transfer physics fundamentals to real-world applications establishes a deeper understanding of underlying concepts while enhancing student interest. Forensic science offers a great opportunity for students to apply physics to highly engaging, real-world contexts.¹ Integrating these opportunities into inquiry-based problem solving in a team environment provides a terrific backdrop for fostering communication, analysis, and critical thinking skills. One such activity, inspired jointly by the museum exhibit “CSI: The Experience”² and David Bonner's TPT article “Increasing Student Engagement and Enthusiasm: A Projectile Motion Crime Scene,”³ provides students with three different crime scenes, each requiring an analysis of projectile motion. In this lesson students socially engage in higher-order analysis of two-dimensional projectile motion problems by collecting information from 3-D scale models and collaborating with one another on its interpretation, in addition to diagramming and mathematical analysis typical to problem solving in physics.