Investigations:
This Part of my digital Portfolio will highlight some of the activities of investigations that we do in our math/physics class.
Marshmallow Challenge:
During this activity, we worked in teams of four to build a structure that would support a marshmallow out of only pasta sticks, tape, and string. The goal was to make the structure as tall as possible, and be able to support the marshmallow on the top without it falling over. We only have about 20 minutes to complete this activity which focused mainly on team building and collaboration. During this activity, I learned that I tried to take over the group immediately which is something I'm working on not doing.
"Lights Out" Challenge:
During this activity, we read a short story about two guys who get lost in a cave and both their flashlights are broken. Using only a few materials(a cup, a small bulb, some wire, tin foil, etc) they had to make a flashlight that would help them find a way out of the cave. Our challenge was to use similar materials to make our own homemade flashlight. Once we were finished, we went to a separate room and turned off the lights to see if our design worked. During his activity, I learned that even a design that looks really weird, can actually work.
Barbie Bungee Lab:
During this lab, we were tasked with safely getting a barbie doll as close to the group when dropped from the stairs at HTHMA using rubber bands. In order to help us with finding how many rubber bands we should use, we studied velocity, acceleration, distance/time, etc. We then calculated how many rubber bands by using plugging in our barbies hight into a formula. We then went over to the stairs at HTHMA and dropped our barbies. The winning group used 32 rubber bands. I learned that in this sort of lab, you should trust the numbers because my group used only 19 rubber bands when our math said to use 27.
Pringle Challenge:
At the beginning of this challenge we were put into groups of 2 or 3 and tasked with creating a box or package that could safely transport a pringle. We had about a week and a half to gather supplies and make our box. The requirements where that the box could not weigh less than 8 grams because the postal service won't allow any packages smaller than that to be shipped. Some other rules were that we had to wrap our package in brown paper and that we couldn't alter our pringle's form, texture or physical form. My group used a checkbook box with a can glued to the bottom. We lined the can with cotton balls and put some more on the top lid of the checkbox so that when we closed it the pringle wouldn't be touching any metal. We also had a competition going on to see which group had the most intact chip, lowest mass(grams) and lowest volume(cm). My group did pretty good. We got third place with 56.12 points. First was 845.7 points, and second got 96.6 points. The way we calculated the scores was we divided our "Intactness Score" of our pringle(scale of 0-10), and divided it by our mass in kilograms times our volume(centimeters) and timesed it by 100. Intactness Score
(mass in kg) x (volume) x100
If I had to redo this challenge again, I would probably try to find some lighted materials so that I would have a lighter package I'd also look for a slightly smaller box so I'd have a smaller volume.
(mass in kg) x (volume) x100
If I had to redo this challenge again, I would probably try to find some lighted materials so that I would have a lighter package I'd also look for a slightly smaller box so I'd have a smaller volume.