This Week in Physics

Hello Parents, Friends, and Students!

The Impact Physicists are knee-deep in their first Scientific Inquiry, the Gravity Car Project.  It explains that there are two parts to this project; in groups of two, three, or four students will build a car that is powered only by the force of gravity (picture here) and then do an experiment to discover how to get the best-working car.  (The assignment is in the students' notebook on page 15).

Their essential question, depending on what their group decided, is:


How will ____________ affect the _______________ of my gravity car?
            different sized wheels                distance
            different falling weights           velocity
           different heights                      acceleration


During the week of October 3, all of the groups should be making hypotheses, writing step-by-step procedures, and building and testing their cars for the farthest distance, fastest velocity, or greatest acceleration.

During the week of October 10-14, students will be changing their car and re-testing, graphing, and drawing conclusions.  Each group will modify their car according to what they chose as their improvement and re-test it to see if the outcome is different.

During the week of October 17,  students will be typing up their Lab Report, which is the largest chunk of their Semester 1 grade in Physics.  Please support them by giving them time to write and type, and perhaps by editing their writing too!

If you are interested in coming in to see how the gravity cars are coming along, please send me an email.  We will be racing the cars and presenting our findings on the night of Impact's first exhibition of the year, on November 10th.  Let the races begin!


Tamar
tamar@es-impact.org