CENCO® AP Physics Lab 2.08: Electrical Resistivity of Materials

Explore the factors affecting the electrical resistance of conductive modeling dough.

Introducing the new CENCO AP Physics lab series!

Ideal for AP Physics 1 and 2, AP Physics C, IB DP Physics, and advanced/honors physics courses, each of the 35 experiments is aligned with the revised College Board AP curriculum. These innovative labs go way beyond traditional exercises, turning real-world scenarios into true guided-inquiry investigations. Students are given a goal, but the investigation is driven by their ideas. As they draw conclusions, students report their results using the Claim-Evidence-Reasoning model. The teacher guides and student manuals are authored and reviewed by AP Physics teachers with decades of combined experience, so you can trust the setups to be successful in your classroom. All labs come complete with instructions and materials for one lab group of 2 to 4 students. For your convenience, labs are packaged to allow you to purchase only what is required for each experiment.

In this innovative guided-inquiry investigation, students must determine the relationship between the physical dimensions of a hunk of conductive modeling dough and its resistance. Even more importantly, they must use their graphical data to evaluate claims made by others - an essential science skill that is often overlooked by traditional exercises. Finally, students apply and extend their understanding by finding the resistivity constant for nichrome wire.