Using guided inquiry to teach academic language

Introducing new physics phenomena through inquiry labs has been a staple of the successful physics teacher for years. Introducing new vocabulary through lab work, however, is less common. This paper offers an example of a simple and short lab that does just that, and one that I have found to be quite useful in my college prep physics courses to help students construct (and retain) functional definitions of the oft-transposed terms distance and displacement. A standard definition for displacement is a change in an object’s position, while distance would be the entire path traveled by the object, yet my students were using the two terms interchangeably, often saying distance when they really should have referred to displacement. I wanted them to be able to clearly distinguish between the two terms, so I designed a brief experiment that allows students the chance to engage with the concept. My colleagues and I have found that putting the students in charge of their learning with this simple activity helps the students better understand the difference between these two terms.