What do you do on the First Day of Physics?

So I'm in the midst of the first day, and since I have no papers to grade or meetings to attend I'm free to reflect a little bit on this beginning.

Historically Experimental Physics has been the hardest of my classes to teach, and this year it's second period, but so far there's an extraordinarily excellent vibe in that class. I mean, I know it's only been one day, but I think the first day is pretty telling about the rest of the year.

So what do you do on the first day of school?

3 things:
Get some information about the kids, their interests, and their folks' contact
Go through preliminary stuff... Syllabus, Safety Contract, the Wiki Contract
Do an Agree/Disagree activity.

This is where we set up a continuum in the room from strongly agree down to strongly disagree, and then put out statements like:
Science is fun.
Scientific progress is good.
One theory is better than another if it explains more phenomena.
The universe is infinitely complex.

I really like it when we get to examine some of the ideas the lay unspoken at the heart of science. Wouldn't it be great if we reverted back to calling science "natural philosophy"? hehehe

So far so good!