Week 2 Blog Post

This week's Big Question was "How can we make a race exciting between people who run at different speeds?" 

Lab

In lab this week, we talked about what makes a race exciting. The key to this is that it is a close race, so there is more suspense and not just one person clearly being the winner from the start of the race. We watched clips of The Freeze as an example of how the Braves team tries to make a race between an Olympic runner and a non-Olympic runner exciting. We then worked with our table groups to use our own data to design a race that didn't produce a clear winner immediately. My group skipped over a typical running race to hopping. We found that when we hopped the same distance, there was only about a .06m/s difference in our speeds. 

Lecture 

During lecture, we talked about describing and modeling motion. We reflected on what we did in lab, and what data we focused on / didn't focus on in order to answer our big question. Then, we talked about what NGSS ideas and principles were covered by this week's lab. The SEPs we thought of were Make observations of movement; Measure distance and time to calculate speed; Plan and conduct an investigation; and use models. One big idea I took away was that we didn't actually measure speed, but calculated it. This will be potentially something important to explain to elementary students: that we can measure or calculate speed. 

The DCI we focused on was Motion and stability. 

We then talked a lot about the CCC, Patterns. As a class we worked through several problems describing motion to figure out/review how to calculate distance or speed. We then discussed how we need standard units in order to be on the same page about what we're measuring; and that it's ok to let students use the Imperical system, or even just a consistent system of "________-length" if that's what they're more familiar with. The point shouldn't be that they can memorize how many inches are in a meter, but that they can measure consistently and use their measurements effectively to test their ideas. 

Pressbook

1. What did you learn?

One thing I learned was that often the danger with roller coasters or other things involving change in position can more often be acceleration. For example, the thing that makes a car crash dangerous is not how fast the car was going (although higher speed can increase risk), but the rate of (de)acceleration. I hadn't really thought about that before, although we learned about position, velocity, and acceleration in high school physics. 

2. What was most helpful?

The thing that was most helpful for my learning was breaking down position, time, speed, velocity, and acceleration. Being able to think of speed in regard to position, velocity as compared to speed, acceleration as compared to velocity, and so on was really helpful for me. 

3. What do you need more information on?

I would like more information about how we graph/track velocity and acceleration. I know velocity and acceleration can be negative, while speed can only be a positive number, but I want more information as to how to visualize that and potentially explain it to students in terms they understand. 

4. What questions/concerns/comments do you have?

I thought this reading was really helpful as a refresher from what I learned in my high school physics class. I think this foundation will be really helpful for what we learn next! 

My biggest question from this reading is, how do we explain these concepts to elementary students, or are these concepts we need to know as teachers but won't be specifically teaching on?