Week 2

The big question addressed in the lab, and a description of what you did.

In the lab our big question was, how can we support play that is exciting but not dangerous? How can we ensure that a race is exciting? In the lab we put these questions to the test by measuring how we can make races fun with someone who is slower and who is faster. A race is not fun when one child is faster than the other. So we measured how fast it would take a faster person to run and walk 6 meteors and then how fast a slower person could go. With this information we were able to see how much of a head start the slower person would need to make the race close and enjoyable for everyone. When we got with another group we figured out how much slower the other person was to determine what the head start was going to be. The person was about 2 seconds slower than four runners. So we gave the other group a 2 second head start and while our person still won, the race was close and more fun to watch. 

A description of what you learned in Thursday's lecture.

During Thursday's lecture we connected our activity from the lab to the NGSS standards for what students should know after this lesson. We also did more examples to find out how much of a head start other people would need but we used the formula to measure motion (speed=distance/time). We also graphed the times and positions of John and Jill in their races to see the difference. Lastly we talked about how we can look at patterns in motion. We used the example of oil coming out of a car to see how when you speed up there is more distance between each oil drop. 

Answer questions about the weekly textbook reading:

What did you learn?

I learned a lot about position, velocity, and acceleration. I feel like I have heard about these topics before in science but have never really gotten to do experiments and stuff with them. Position tells you where you are relative to a reference point. Velocity measures how fast position changes. Acceleration measures how fast velocity changes. All three work together. 

What was most helpful?

I always find the assessments to be helpful at the end of the pressbook because it clears up so many questions. I thought the questions about the units that can be used to express the average speed of a car on a highway was most helpful. I was very confused at what could be used as a measuring tool and now it makes a lot more sense. 

What do you need more information on?

I don’t really think there is anything that I need more information on. 

What questions/concerns/comments do you have?

Can we always predict where things will be in the future when describing motion? 

Times from our race 


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