PHYSICS SUMMER PREP PACKET
NAME: _________________________
You have signed up for Physics or Physics ADV next year. These are fun but challenging courses, and this
packet is designed to help you prepare. Your responses will be collected on the first day of class, and
this will constitute your first grade of the year.
This packet has two parts.
 First, a series of activities wherein you actually experience physics. You can start these
immediately. Have fun with these!
 Secondly, a set of math practice problems that review several skills you have already learned,
but may need to refresh your memory after many weeks of summer sun and fun. Start part two
after August 1st. You are not being graded on correctness, just on having done the problems. Do
not get any outside help; this is an assessment of your knowledge and skills, not your parents’ or
Google’s. After doing the problems, grade yourself from the key on the back of the sheet and
follow the further directions there.
When you are turning this in on the first day of class, include all these sheets plus your work papers, all
stapled together neatly and in logical order.
Have a wonderful summer!
—Mr. Regester
PART ONE: EXPERIENCE PHYSICS
COMPLETE AT ANY TIME THIS SUMMER
Complete at least seven of the following ten tasks. Date each as you complete them. If the task has
associated follow-up questions, answer them, in complete sentences, calculations or drawings in the
space provided. Have fun!
1. Climb a tree. Don’t fall. Date completed:________________
2. Go to a fair or amusement park. Date:__________________
a. Ride a roller coaster.
 Where on the roller coaster do you feel pressed downward into your seat the
hardest? _______________________________________________________
 Where on the roller coaster do you feel pressed downward into your seat the
least? __________________________________________________________
 Where is the engine of the car? _____________________________________
 What do you feel when you go over the crest of a hill? ___________________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
b. If there is a Gravitron ride (a round room that spins around a vertical axis; sometimes called
the Rotor, Starship or other names), go on it.
 What do you feel as the ride is spinning? Describe in detail. _______________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
c. If there is a FreeFall ride (you go up a vertical tower then drop straight down; Tower of Terror
and other similar names are used), ride it.
 How does your stomach feel just after you are dropped? _________________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
 How does your stomach feel as you are stopping at the bottom? ___________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
3. Go to a playground. Date:__________________
a. Hang upside-down from the monkey bars. How does your head feel? __________________
____________________________________________________________________________
b. Do some pull-ups.
c. Swing on the swings.
 Time how many seconds it takes to swing back-and-forth 10 times, then divide
by 10 to find the “period” of the swing. _______________________________
Repeat on another swing that is shorter. ______________________________
Does the length of the swing affect the period? ________________________
 Swing high enough so the chains go slack at the highest point. (Be careful,
though!) What do you feel in your stomach at the high point, when the chains
are slack? ______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
What do you feel at the lowest point? ________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
d. If there is one of those small twirling merry-go-rounds, ride it.
 When spinning, you will feel as if you are being pulled. In what direction does it
feel like you’re being pulled? _______________________________________
 Where is the feeling strongest, when standing near the middle, or near the
edge? __________________________________________________________
 What happens to that feeling when you spin faster? ____________________
e. If there is a slide, slide down it.
 Take off one of your shoes. Set it on the slide. Does it slide down? _________
 Flip the shoe upside-down. Will it sit on the slide or does it slide down? _____
 Put a coin on the slide. Will it sit on the slide or does it slide down? ________
4. Fly a kite. Date:__________________
5. Ride an elevator. Take a bathroom scale with you. Date:__________________
a. Stand on the bathroom scale.
 When the elevator first starts going upwards, what happens to the reading on the scale?
_____________________________________________________________________
 When the elevator has been traveling upwards for a few seconds (and is continuing to
do so), what happens to the scale reading? __________________________________
 When the elevator is traveling upwards but is in the process of coming to a stop, what
happens to the scale reading? _____________________________________________
 From rest, when the elevator first starts going downwards, what happens to the reading
on the scale? __________________________________________________________
 When the elevator has been traveling downwards for a few seconds (and is continuing
to do so), what happens to the scale reading?
6. Ride a bike, one with gears. Date:__________________
a. Draw the gear combination (i.e. on the crank and the freewheel) that makes pedaling the
hardest.
b. Draw the combination of gears that makes pedaling the easiest.
c. How slow can you roll and still remain balanced without your feet touching the ground?
__________________________________________________________________________
7. Ask a parent to drive a car on a large, empty parking lot, with you as a passenger. NOTE: the parent
must be the driver, not you.
Date:_____________
Parent signature (required): __________________________
a. Driving in a straight line, accelerate from rest to 30 miles per hour.
 How many seconds did it take to reach 30 mph? ________________________
 Calculate, on average, how many miles per hour your speed increased each
second. ________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
 As you are speeding up (in a straight line), what happens to you and what do
you feel? Describe in several sentences. ______________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
 Slam on the brakes. What happens to you and what do you feel? Describe in
several sentences. ________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
b. Drive in a large circle, steering to the left.
 What do you feel? ________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
 How does that feeling change if you go faster? _________________________
_______________________________________________________________
 How does that feeling change if you tighten the circle to a smaller radius? ___
_______________________________________________________________
8. Find the circuit breaker panel or fuse box for your home, and for a car. Date:_________________
Don’t do anything with them, just find out where they are and look. Most houses have breaker panels,
and most cars have fuse panel.
 Where in your home is the breaker panel or fuse box? ________________________________
 Where in your car is the fuse panel? ______________________________________________
9. If you know how to swim, go swimming at a pool. Wear goggles or a mask so you can see while
you’re under water. Don’t do this alone; make sure a lifeguard is present. Date:_________________
a. Swimming a foot or two below the surface of the water, look straight up. What do you see? __
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
b. Swimming a foot or two below the surface of the water, look up and to the side. In other words,
look diagonally upwards at the underside of the surface of the water. What do you see? ____
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
c. Swim down to the bottom of the deepest part of the pool. Describe what you feel. _________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
d. Try to float without treading water. Take the deepest breath you can, hold it, lie back. Can you
float? Now exhale completely. What changes? Describe. ______________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
e. Float some objects in the water. Try a very low-density object, like a beach ball and another,
higher-density object, like a nerf ball. Draw both of them from the side, showing how much of
each is below the surface of the water. You googles (or mask) will help you see.
air__________________________________________
water
f. Push a beach ball downward, forcing it all the way under water. Now release it. Describe what
happens. ____________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
10. On a sunny day outside, create a rainbow with a garden hose. Date:___________________
a. Describe the rainbow. Where is it, relative to the shadow of your head? __________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
b. List the colors you see. _________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
c. Is red on the outside or inside of the curved bow? ___________________________________
d. Sometimes you can see more than one rainbow. If so, describe how they differ from each other.
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
PART TWO: MATH PRACTICE
COMPLETE AFTER AUGUST 1st
Do the following problems, using a separate sheet of paper, neatly organized. Do not use a calculator.
Check your answers from the key on the back of this sheet, and mark your grade here. Then follow
the directions on the back of this sheet.
Rounding
Grade: ____/10
1. Round 734.3281 to the nearest ten.
2. Round 734.3281 to the hundredths place.
3. Round 0.9205348 to the hundredths place.
4. Round 0.9205348 to the thousandths place.
5. Round 0.9205348 to the ten-thousandths place.
Scientific Notation
Grade: ____/10
1. Write 5x103 as a regular (floating-point) number.
2. Write 2.3x10-6 as a floating-point number.
3. Write -4.006x109 as a floating-point number.
4. Write 7,342,968 in scientific notation.
5. Write 0.00004386 in scientific notation.
S.I. (metric) prefixes
6. Calculate (3x107)·(2x105)
7. Calculate (2.1x103)·(3.2x10-5).
8. Calculate(4x103)2.
9. Calculate (9.3x104)/(3.0x107).
10. Calculate (7.8x108)+(4x107).
Grade: ____/10
1. What is the S.I. prefix that means “1000”?
2. What does the prefix centi- mean?
3. What does the prefix micro- mean?
4. What is the SI unit of distance?
5. What would you call 1/1000th of a second?
Solving for a Variable
6. Round 94,506,192.46 to the tenths place.
7. Round 94,506,192.46 to the ones place.
8. Round 94,506,192.46 to the nearest million.
9. Round 43.460173 to the tenths place
10. Round 43.4600173 to the ten-thousandths place.
6. A thousand is 10 to the power of ___.
7. A million is 10 to the power of ___.
8. A billion is 10 to the power of ___.
9. One-billionth is 10 to the power of ___.
10. The S.I. symbol M stands for what?
Grade: ____/10
1. If F = m·a, solve for m.
6. If y = ½·a· t2, solve for a.
2. If v = d / t, solve for d.
7. If y = ½·a· t2, solve for t.
3. If Q = C·V, solve for V.
8. If F = G·M·m/r2, solve for M.
4. If E = m·c2, solve for m.
9. If V2/V1 = N2/N1, solve for V2.
5. If y= m·x+b, solve for m.
10. If V2/V1 = N2/N1, solve for V1.
DO NOT LOOK AT THIS PAGE UNTIL YOU’VE COMPLETED THE PREVIOUS PAGE
Answers to practice questions
Rounding
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
730
734.33
0.92
0.921
0.9205
Scientific Notation
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
5000
0.0000023
-4,006,000,000
7.342968x106
4.386x10-5
S.I. (metric) prefixes
1. kilo- or k
2. 1/100th or 0.01 or onehundredth
3. 1/1,000,000th or 0.000001
or one-millionth
4. the meter
5. a millisecond
Solving for a Variable
Grade: ____/10
6. 94,506,192.5
7. 94,506,192
8. 95,000,000
9. 43.5
10. 43.4600
Grade: ____/10
6. 6x1012
7. 6.72x10-2 or 6.7x10-2 or .067
8. 1.6x107
9. 3.1x10-3
10. 8.2x108
If you get 9 or 10 correct, you don’t need to do
anything else. If you get 8 or fewer correct, go to
http://www.khanacademy.org/math/arithmetic/d
ecimals/v/rounding-decimals . Watch the video,
then hit the green “Practice this Concept” to the
top-right of the video. Answer practice questions
until you get ten in a row correct.
If you get 9 or 10 correct, you don’t need to do
anything else. If you get 8 or fewer correct, go to
http://academic.greensboroday.org/~regesterj/p
otl/BasicSkills/SciNot/SciNotA.htm. Read the page
(be sure to watch the videos linked in the text)
and do problems 1-20 on separate paper. For the
problems that have solution videos, watch the
videos and check your answers.
Grade: ____/10
6. 3
7. 6
8. 9
9. -9
10. Mega-, or a million
Grade: ____/10
1. m = F/a
2. d = v·t
6. a = 2y/t2
3. V = Q/C
4. m = E/c2
5. m = (y-b)/x
8. M = F·r2/(G·m)
9. V2 = N2·V1/N1
10. V1 = N1·V2/N2
2𝑦
7. 𝑡 = √
𝑎
If you get 9 or 10 correct, you don’t need to do
anything else. If you get 8 or fewer correct, go to
http://academic.greensboroday.org/~regesterj/p
otl/BasicSkills/SI/SI.htm. Read the page and
complete questions 1-11. Be sure to memorize
the table of SI prefixes.
If you get 9 or 10 correct, you don’t need to do
anything else. If you get 8 or fewer correct, go to
http://academic.greensboroday.org/~regesterj/p
otl/BasicSkills/Isolating/IsolatingAVariableA.htm.
Read the page and do problems 1 through 7 on
separate paper, neatly organized.