Week 3

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

Our big question from this week's lab was, what affects a rider’s speed down a slide? With this question in our minds we made a list of variables that we could test to see what the effects are. Some of the effects we came up with are weight, outside force, clothing, material of slide, slope, length, etc. for our investigation we looked at how the weight affects how fast you will go down the slide. For our experiment we filled a film container with different materials to change the weight. We then slid the film container down a “slide” that was 2 meters long. Through our experiment we learned that weight does affect how fast you will go down the slide. Our film containers that weighed the most were filled full of water and sand and they went down the fastest. 

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

During the lecture we learned that a rider’s speed on a slide is affected by the height of the rider, the steepness of the slide, surface/clothing, and rider's weight. We learned the higher the slide, the faster the speed of the rider. This is because the riders accelerate as they slide down a slide and if the slide is higher there is more time a rider has to speed up. Also, the steeper the slide, the faster the speed. A steeper slide cancels less of the downward force of gravity. We learned that the type of clothing affects the speed of the rider because of the friction of the materials. The amount of friction depends upon the materials that slide against each other. Lastly, the rider's weight changes the speed because gravity pulls harder on more massive objects. The heavier something is the faster it is going to go. 

Answer questions about the weekly textbook reading:

What did you learn?

While reading the press book for this week, I learned a lot about what a force is and Newton's Three Laws. I learned that a force is a push, pull, spin, bounce, throw, kick, etc. Newton’s first law is that objects at rest, while objects in motion unless acted on by unbalanced external force. Newton’s second law is the greater the mass of an object, the more force it will take to accelerate the object. Lastly, Newton’s third law is if object A pushes on object B simultaneously pushes back on object A with the same size forces in the opposite direction. 

What was most helpful?

While reading the textbook I found that the real word examples and simulations were very helpful. One example that helped me was the car crash in Newton’s first law. It painted a picture in my head of how the first law actually works. 

What do you need more information on?

I felt like the simulations about net force, motion, friction and acceleration were a little confusing and would love to talk about these topics more and get better real world examples. 

What questions/concerns/comments do you have?

What fun activities and experiments can we do in our classroom to make these topics fun and exciting for our students to learn about?