Physics |
with Mr. Schwartz |
To Kill a mockingbird roller coaster
For this project we read created a roller coaster that could be traveled by a marble. This project incorporated Humanities and Physics. In Ms. Carol's class we read the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. We also studied themes and topics. Once we finished the novel we chose a character to base our coaster off of. Then we sketched out blueprints of each element which was a specific, impactful, moment in the character's life and we created a blueprint of the entire coaster to scale. We also made brochures explained each element, literary devices used in that element, and a theme we found in the novel. Then we constructed the coaster. Once it was completely built we made a second draft of the blueprint because things changed throughout the building process. Then we filled out an energy audit. We calculated the energy at each point in the roller coaster using the formulas PE = mgh and KE = 1/2mv^2. I especially liked the physics aspect of this project because it was new. I learned an abundance about the conservation of energy. Loren Li and I worked together on this project. I feel we did a good job of giving each other feedback so we were able to improve our roller coaster. It was only us two in the group and other groups had three people. We managed our time very well and divided up the work evenly. One struggle we faced with our coaster was the wide turn. It was very inconsistent and we had a hard time getting the marble to go from the second mini loop around the big turn and into the funnel. It was very stressful having it so inconsistent so we decided to start over from there. We tore up half of our coaster and changed our design so it went from a funnel, wide turn, to funnel. We definitely felt this necessary and it worked a lot better afterwards. I think one thing we could improve on involving work ethic would be our pace. We spent a lot of time of everything and I think we could have worked a little quicker and produced the same quality work. If I could change this project, I think I would have us spend less time on the element sketches. We did three drafts and I feel they didn't help that much. It was good to plan out what we were going to build but three drafts seemed a little excessive but other than that I really liked everything else. Overall this project was very interesting and I feel I grew a lot as a student and partner. I am very proud of the work we produced in the end.
Graph my motion
Graph my Motion was a mini project we completed in a total of three days. The purpose of this project was to gain practice creating motion and velocity graphs. Each group of pairs made a video and afterwards everyone would graph their data. Overall it was pretty fun. We did actually have a decent amount of practice which I think was the best part. One struggle my partner and I faced was making sure our times and distances were accurate. What we ended up doing was we measured one cement square outside and it was 2m so then I either turned one full square, 2m, or half of it which was 1m. We recorded the video then imported it on my computer then timed it. It ended up working really well. To be honest, this project wasn't that hard to stay on task for considering it was so short. If I could change this project, I would make it with more meaning. We just sorta made videos, edited them, then showed it. I didn't feel it helped expand our knowledge that much. Maybe next time rather than having all of us make our own videos Mr. Schwartz could just use videos from previous years, and have the new students graph that. I feel they would get the same benefit but it a shorter time period and it would still be fun for them.
Here is the link to our video.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6LUid4JnQu-NmhxM2NMaXdubWs/edit?usp=sharing
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6LUid4JnQu-NmhxM2NMaXdubWs/edit?usp=sharing