Briar Crain - Science Methods II

 This week in the lab and reading, we learned about the kinds of energy involved in a pendulum swing. A new concept we learned is thermal energy and how the particles of the pendulum and the air particles collide to create thermal energy. The activity in the Pressbook and the activity in the reading helped show how the length of the pendulum is the only thing that impacts the speed of the pendulum. Regarding a child on a swing, the child must be pushed to transfer energy back to the rider. We also learned the engineering design process, which includes identifying the problem, exploring, creating, testing the idea, and making improvements. Our experiment included dropping an egg from one meter above a bowl filled with our choice of straw, wood chips, tire, sand, and plastic wrap. We failed our first two drops at one meter but after adding plastic wrap we succeeded from one meter and two meters. 

 1. This week in the lab, we were attacked by four bees. Besides the four bees, I finally understood all of the forces being enacted when someone is sliding down a slide. This includes the gravity force moving downward, the friction from the slide, and the friction pushing the rider up the slide (moving against gravity). We also discussed air drag on objects and how that affects the speed at which objects fall depending on the size of the object. This mostly has to do with the size of an object and less to do with the weight of an object. This largely had to do with this week's question, "Why do things fall at different rates?" The experiment we performed used a makeshift swing made from a wooden stick, string, and a washer. We investigated whether wind affects the rate at which objects fall, so we used a fan as wind and conducted eight trials, four with wind and four without. We concluded that there is not a large enough time gap in the trials to conclude that wind has a...

 1. The lab focused on the main question, "How can we support play that is exciting but not dangerous?" More specifically we focused on investigating the speed of riders going down a slide. My group chose to narrow our experiment to whether the wetness of the slide impacted the rider's speed. We designed our investigation and conducted several test runs to ensure our measurements were as accurate as possible. We concluded that riders are faster when the slide is wet.  2. In the lecture we discussed force and friction, and how those components impact the speed of the rider.  We mainly focused on how those two components are involved with slide steepness. It was very interesting to learn about the angle of gravity and how friction and gravity are related. Also, we learned how different materials and clothing of the rider impact how fast they are going and how much friction is involved.  3. The reading discussed force and how things can move through inertia, kinetic fri...

 1. Lab this week was focused on head starts and how to make races fair for everyone, with the main question being, "How can we make races fair for everyone?" My group chose to investigate this question with a one-legged race. We gave the weaker racer a one-hop head start, which worked quite well with our group. However, our measurements were incredibly off when we tested this against another group and in front of the class.  2. In Thursday's lecture, we related everything we learned in the lab to the NGSS framework. We also learned how to create a more accurate test based on the speed of a racer and we can use a distance head start for the racers. The main idea of this relates back to the equation: speed=distance/time. Also, we talked about patterns in motion, and how the start and stop speeds impact the head start time.  3. The reading was based on all aspects of motion, which allows us to predict the speed and action in different situations. Learning all of the things ...