I am planning to do a Hawaiian Based Integrated Science Curriculum, which involves part of the Physics and Capstone idea that I was juggling between. But this is just a teaser =) Once my proposal is finalized and I am 100%, then I will share more.
What I do want to talk about is what I recently did with my Physics students. It was more STEM related but it could be translated into something place-based or cultural based because it deals with collisions and impact forces, what around us doesn't have that?! Anyway, I did the classic Egg Drop with my students. This project took about three weeks but we went over so many things.
We started with the Engineering Design Process and I made a lot of constraints that really made the students have to actually draw out their design and label everything with dimensions. Prior to this, I taught the students about conservation of energy, momentum, and impulse. I told them to really think about these concepts and how mass, time, speed, etc, affects the impact that the egg will feel once it hits the ground.
We had two drop days, the first drop day was to just test their original prototypes so that they have time to learn and improve their capsules. This is the first time that I allowed it and it became very beneficial. In one of my periods, only one capsule survived each of our three drops. When the actual drop day came around, 7 survived! The final drop day required the students to take data for their calculations. The end calculation would be to solve for the impact force that their egg capsules felt. The final drop day was very exciting for the students and below I provide videos and pictures of their excitement.
For the math, they did all their calculations (they needed to solve for the velocity once it hit he ground using the conservation of energy, momentum, impulse, the weight of their casules **different from mass**, and the impact force). Using all of their calculations, we used Google Sheets to graph the data as a class to compare how each variable affects the impact force for each of the students' capsules. Their final grade depends on their complete and typed laboratory reports that was shared between the partners, I'm assuming through Google Docs, they had the freedom to decide.
This lesson had so much STEM in it and I was so happy to see how they though that it was awesome. They had to do so much calculations, math, science, technology, everything! But they all liked it, so I'm happy =) Enjoy the pics and videos! This is also a semi-preview of what my Plan B Project will include.
I love what you did with your students and the egg drop Tessie. Engineering design process is something that students get an opportunity to apply their skills that they are learning in their science class. I am teaching my students about speed, acceleration, and Newtons laws of motion and this would be such a great project for them to do to make those connections with the content they are learning in a real-world application project.
ReplyDeleteYou have really thought about your Plan B Capstone. I am inspired by your ideas and I think I am going to do my Plan B for my science class instead of my other 2 math courses that I teach. I think I will be able to integrate content areas and will have more opportunities to make meaningful project like what you are doing with your students in your physics class.
I wish I could have seen the egg drop in person. For some reason your videos don't work and I can see them. But they look like they are all engaged and having fun.
:-)
Hi Tessie,
ReplyDeleteI'm really impressed by the depth you and your students went into with this project. I never did anything like this when I was in high school - in fact we didn't even have a physics class - GASP! I finally got to take physics in college...and found it very interesting. I'd like to learn more about the recipe for this project and think it will be an awesome component for Plan B -
Thanks for sharing it!
Felicia