The fundamental concepts in physics often pose major challenges to students' preformed notions of how the world works, and as such require approaches that require them to confront these notions head on. Given that much of high school physics involves the study of force and motion, ideas that students can experience daily and have a wealth of personal knowledge to draw upon already, classroom projects can be built around creating discrepant events that challenge students to think about what they are experiencing in a new way.

The majority of SLA students ride public transportation of some sort to and from school every day. Most have experienced the lurch forward, the lurch backward, the sliding belongings, dripping water, and leaning to the side as the bus goes around a turn. The foundation of this project was asking students to gather these observations and start inquiring as to why they happened and how they could generalize their understanding to other situations. The goal was for students to be able to communicate this in such a way that others riding on the same public transportation vehicles would be able to understand the key physical concepts behind their experience.

This project was designed as part of a unit that introduced force to students as an agent of change (to motion). The project description is here, and the individual checkpoints are shown here and here. The unit plan for this unit is here.