Week 4 Lab Semester2



 

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

This week's big question addressed in lab was “What affects how long it takes a swing to go back and forth?”. But, before answering that question, we re-visited our question from last week's lab “what affects a rider’s speed down a slide?”.  We looked at why slide height matters again, and learned that riders accelerate as they slide down a slide, so, the higher the slide the more time a rider has to speed up. We talked about the importance of steepness, and surface as well. We reviewed friction and practiced drawing forces on a slide. Then we talked about “why things fall”. Many of us were surprised to see that the tennis ball and paper ball that was tighter fell at the same speed. Before being a tight crunched ball we saw that the tennis ball fell faster. This was due, in part to air drag. Then we moved back into why rider weight doesn't matter. Then, we got to work on investigating swings! We designed an investigation, made a whiteboard, and tested our swing. We wanted to look at how chain/string length affected the swing. We did three different lengths of string, with three trials. We found that the longer the string, the longer it took for it to swing.

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

This week in lecture we continued to talk about swings. We looked at two variables that some groups tested, that may affect how long it takes to swing back and forth. First we talked about rider’s weight, which, we found does not effect the length of time it takes for a swing to go back and forth. This connects back to when we dropped two different-sized metal balls in lab this week. They both fell at the same weight. Gravity does pull harder on heavier objects, but the heavier object is harder to accelerate. These cancel one another out, and weight is not affected when swinging. Then, we talked about the length of the chain/swing. Just as my group concluded, the longer the rope, the longer the period is. We took a look at pendulums and did some simulations. At the top of the swing there is gravitational potential energy, the taller the pendulum the more potential energy. Overall the big take away from lecture was that, weight does not affect the period/length of time it takes for a swing to go back and forth, AND that the longer the swing the longer this period is. 

  1. Answer questions about the weekly textbook reading:

    1. What did you learn?

I learned more about pendulums, as well as the types of energy. I learned more about the importance as well as the history of pendulums. Ang their connection to Galileo. 

  1. What was most helpful?

The formative assessments as always was helpful in testing my knowledge prior to learning. The connection to the NGSS standards was also really helpful to see written out. And I liked the lesson ideas provided at the end. 

  1. What do you need more information on?

How can I describe potential and kinetic energy in simple terms to an elementary student who is having trouble grasping the two concepts? 

  1. What questions/concerns/comments do you have?

Similar to my last response, how can I teach these concepts in a classroom?

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