I wish Angry Birds had been around when I was teaching high school physics. Please don’t think of the game as a hate crime against hogs, or an avian anger management program—instead, think of it as a computer interactive lab to explore projectile motion and force diagrams. Your students are playing it anyway, at least let them know that they are learning some physics along the way. Launching a bird? No! They are varying the initial angles and velocities to hit a target distance. Take advantage of student interest with the following strategies to help you integrate Angry Birds into your instruction.
Before Pythagoras (the equation, that is) even comes into the discussion, we should be asking our students to describe projectile motions that they see in their everyday lives. Focus on the big picture question: What are the different factors that determine the range of a projectile? Projectile motion problems can easily become algebra problems that focus on identifying the right number in a diagram and substituting it into the correct equation. We want them to see projectile motion in baseball games, long football throws (think the famous Hail Mary, game-winning touchdown pass by Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach to Drew Pearson in a 1975 NFL playoff game), the human cannonball at the circus, rockets, and shooting hoops.