Students in Michael Lipp’s AP Physics I class enjoyed a speedy start to the new school year. They jumped right in with a first-day “inquiry lab,” an important focus of the science curriculum at Bolles.

In this case, students designed their own lab to determine the speed of a toy car. They received only the materials and the goal – without instructions – and were asked to design their own experiment. Their components included a toy car, a stopwatch and a metric measuring tape. They were tasked with determining the speed of the car from a graph of their measurements.

“This is particularly important in AP classes since experimental design and the analysis of experimental data have become regular questions on AP Science exams,” Lipp said.

Some students took their experiment outdoors to garner their data in the Schultz Hall breezeways.