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Homeschooled First Grader (Braintree, MA)
Physics
Mirror Image
April 22 - 2020 (Kindergarten)
Water Leakage
June 20 - 2020 (Kindergarten)
Mortaza designed this experiment to measure how fast water leaks from a sheet of paper. He measured time with the stop watch on his tablet.
Trajectory
July 8 - 2020 (Kindergarten)
Using slow-motion recording on my cell phone and gridded background page, Martaza and I (dad) marked the trajectory of a marble. We then try to repeat the process, but we couldn't through the marble in the exact path.
Popsicle Sticks Jump
December 25 - 2020 (1st grade)
The potential energy in slightly bent popsicle sticks transforms into kinetic energy.
Kinetic vs. Potential Energy
Fall - 2020 (1st grade)
I tried to explain to Mortaza what happens to kinetic and potential energy when we throw up a ball and it comes down.
Here is Mortaza's attempt to figure out what I told him.
Free-Body Diagram
October 12- 2020 (1st grade)
Mortaza's first attempt to draw a free-body diagram (not exactly a correct one).
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Compressing the world into a point
March 9- 2021 (1st grade)
I was working behind my computer one afternoon when Mortaza hurtled into my room, grabbed two markers and said "Dad, if one of these markers move toward the other one with a speed of 4 miles per hour, while they are 4 miles apart, then the tip of the moving marker will be the same as the end of the other marker." I overcame the the shock of this sudden interruption and replied,
"This is true after an hour since the speed of the moving marker is 4 miles per hour." He then smiled and said, "What if the speed of the moving marker was infinite. Then the tip of the moving marker and the end of the other marker will be instantly the same point." He then continued, "In fact, the whole world would be compressed into a single point."
Later on, when I asked him to tell me again about this topic, this time filming him, he said "if the speed of the moving marker was infinite and the distance was infinite too, then the two points would be the same." To which I replied, "not necessarily. It depends on how you define the two infinite values."
The energy from a paper clip
March 24 - 2021 (1st grade)
Mortaza was playing in the sitting room when I entered and sat on the sofa. All of a sudden, he asked me if I could ask Siri (iPad) what the speed of light was. So, I did. With some difficulty, Mortaza entered the number in the calculator app and multiplied it by itself. Then he asked me if I knew the mass of a paper clip. I didn't know, so I asked Siri again. It turned out to be around one gram. It was then that I realized what he was trying to do. I asked him whether he was calculating the Einstein's famous formula. He said yes. He said that if we multiplied the mass of an object by the square of the speed of light, we would get the amount of energy if the object was transformed to energy. In response to my question, he said that he had learned about Einstein's formula in this video.
I told him that since the mass is in grams he should use the speed of light in m/s. I got it again from Siri and he actually calculated the energy from a paper clip. When he got the answer, his smile wasn't any wider only because his lips didn't stretch any more.
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Newton's Law of Gravitation
May 25 - 2021 (1st grade)
Mortaza came to my office and asked me to help him calculate the Newton's formula for gravitational force. I did help him and he finished his calculations. It turned out he wanted to calculate the gravitational force between a planet and another planet as well as the same force between a planet and a star. We also made an attempt to calculate the formula in Excel.
The Speed of Light, The Exact Value
November 2022 (3rd grade)
Mortaza and I were reading his math book (Life of Fred, Pre-Algebra 0). The topic was the speed of light. The book claimed that the exact value of the speed of light was 299792458 m/s. The book then posed the question of how the speed of light could be precisely this value. To explain the book's point, I started a lengthy explanation that it was virtually impossible to find the exact value (without any digits after the decimal point and without any error) when we measure a quantity like speed. I was almost finished when Mortaza said my point was not valid about the speed of light and the value of the speed of light was precisely the mentioned value. I asked why to which he answered because one meter was defined based on the speed of light. This was another situation when I felt that I was the student and he was the teacher.
Later I asked him how we define one second. Without hesitation, he answered through the frequency of waves emitted from cesium.
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