Our Physics, Let Me Show You It

I pulled together our physics study for the year from various resources. Originally, I planned to use the physics experiment book recommended in The Well-Trained Mind. After receiving it, however, and being honest with myself, I knew that experiments were much more likely to get done if we had all the supplies already. So I took the list of topics, and set about finding a kit for each topic. Here's what I ended up purchasing.

TOPS Electricity and the accompanying starter kit of materials.
TOPS Magnetism and the accompanying starter kit of materials.
Adventures in Science Color and Light
Science in a Nutshell: Flight! Gliders to Jets
Science in a Nutshell: Sound Vibrations
Science in a Nutshell: Water Physics
Physics Workshop, Thames & Kosmos

I didn't find a kit initially for heat. I have found the TOPS Heat unit, which is recommended for grades 8 through 12. It does look sort of fun, though, and I like the format of the TOPS units. Otherwise, I'll pull together my own supplies for heat. Gasp!

Then I went searching for supplementary books. This was much harder than I had anticipated. Many supplemental science books are written for a lower reading level than EG is capable of. There aren't a lot of mid-range books; it jumped quickly to books written for adult audience. Here's what I compiled, though:

The New Way Things Work
Cool Stuff
Cool Stuff 2.0
The Story of Inventions, Claybourne.
Electricity and Magnetism, Adamczyk.
Jets, Hewish.
Usborne Illustrated Dictionary of Science.
The Cartoon Guide to Physics, Gonick.
Touch This! Conceptual Physics for Everyone, Hewitt.
The Thermodynamics of Pizza, Morowitz.
The Physics of Christmas, Roger Highfield.
Waves, Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, Objects in Motion, Matter and Energy, and Liquids and Gases, all by Paul Fleisher.

Each week, I've pulled out some related reading to the topic from that week's lab activities.

What we're not doing that I wish we were? More science-based writing. However, EG already writes summaries for history; I don't want to just add more summaries with slightly different content. I'm hoping to start, after Christmas, requiring different portions of a lab report. I don't expect a full report from her, yet, but she could start by writing up formally the materials and procedure sections, for example.