Week Two and Three for Science Methods II

What question are we investigating?

For the second and third week of Science Methods II, we would continue to ask the question: “How can we support play that is exciting but not dangerous?”. We also would look at “ What affects a rider’s speed down a slide”. We did this through talking in small groups about the different things that could affect the rider’s speed down a slide and create an experiment based on this information.

What did we do in lab to investigate this question?

The teacher would first do this through allowing everyone in small groups to talk about different ways that could affect the speed of someone going down the slide. Then as a whole group we would write down are thoughts over it. Some examples of this can be weight, size, and clothing or material. My small group would choose to experiment how the weight affects someone’s speed going down the slide. The group’s initial thinking was that weight will affect how fast someone goes. We would do three trials of the same amount of blocks and calculate the average for it as the total. We would test with zero blocks and seven blocks being the highest number for this experiment. This would allow my small group to make a graph to show the results in the experiment we created. All my small group members would be surprised that the results of the experiment showed the opposite of our initial thoughts and weight doesn’t affect how someone goes down the slide. 

What did we figure out?

Another important part would be in both of the lectures and talking about speed, distance, or time throughout the class period. We did this through talking about others' experiments to get a clearer understanding of the information. This would help learn concepts like acceleration, velocity, force, and friction. That would help me to see how these concepts work with things like going down a slide. An example of this can be when Jeff made us draw a picture of how we thought the baby would go down the slide with the arrows. This would allow me to see how it works in more of a visual way. It also would allow me to see how all of these concepts work together to allow someone to do something like going down a slide. 

What are new or remaining questions after the investigation? 

This lab taught me more about different concepts that are important in physics like acceleration, velocity, force, and friction. This would be done through doing the experiment with the slide and talking more about it in both lecture time periods. I would say that I need to practice more outside or inside of class the arrows with all the concepts more before having to take an exam over it. Lastly, it would allow me to get a bit of a clearer understanding of how acceleration and velocity are similar but still have differences.