Teacher Choice

• Bouncing Ball

• Pendulum

• Liquid Assets

Measuring

• Measurement can be made in standard or metric.

• Students will quickly see that metric measurement make calculations and graphing much easier.

Bouncing Ball

• Students select a ball that bounces.• Collect data by letting the ball bounce from

various heights and recording how high the ball bounces.

• Suggestions for data collection are on the sheet.

• Use this data to predict how high a ball will bounce when the ball is dropped from a much higher height.

Happy Balls

• www.sciencekit.com search for “happy balls

• One ball bounces while the other doesn’t. They act differently when place in the deep freeze or boiling water.

Pendulum Activities

Activities

• Create a one second timer.

• Collect data and predict the period for a much longer pendulum.

Accuracy:

• In increase accuracy let the pendulum swing a couple of times before starting to time.

• Begin timing when the pendulum is at an extreme position. Either far to the left or right.

• Time for 10 swings and divide by 10 to get the time for one swing.

Procedure:

• Measure the period of a pendulum using lengths from 10 cm to 80 cm.

• Use the accuracy ideas listed above.

• Use six to eight different points.

• Record the data on the sheet provided.

• Plot the points on the graph. Length of pendulum goes on x-axis. Time goes on the y-axis.

Choose Your Activity

• Bouncing ball– Choose a ball– The height dropped from will be cm

• Pendulum– The length of the larger pendulum will be

• We will test your predictions at

• The length of the pendulum will be 275 cm

• The height of the drop will be 301

Double Pendulum

• Hold the pendulum above the edge of a table and allow to swing. The period swinging large and part of the swing will be under the table. Each contribute to the period of the pendulum.

Processing

• Ball bounce– Olympic challenge

• Pendulum– More information on the full document in the

folder on calculating gravity

• M & M activity– Document in folder– Can be done as growth or decay– Also non-linear

M & M Activity

• Experiment 1—Begin with 4 M&Ms in a cup. Shake the cup, pour out, count the number of “M” that are showing, add that number M&Ms to the cup, and write down the total number of M&Ms in the cup. Repeat until another trial can not be completed.

• Experiment 2—Begin with a full cup and take out the number of M&Ms each time that have a “M” showing.

Graphing the Data

• Experiment 1 will be an exponential growth curve.

• Experiment 2 will be an exponential decay curve.

Liquid Assets

• This activity comes from “Liquid Assets: Increasing Students’ Mathematical Capital” Mathematics Teacher, March 2000, pages 172-179

• Each group needs a cylindrical glass of drinking water (the closer to a cylinder the better), a straw, a centimeter ruler, graph paper, (maybe graphing calculator)

Liquid Assets Directions

• Directions are not given on the sheet. You are asked to describe the experiment.– Students designate a “sipper” from the group. – Measure and record the height of the water.– The sipper takes a sip of water.– Measure the height of the water.– The next sips of water should be as uniform

as possible. – Continue until the water is gone.