Strategies, successes and resources for “Explore” stage

[admin]

In the For You To Do, students are meant to “Explore” the phenomena of the activity, making careful observations and drawing some conclusions about what is at work. What successes did you have in facilitating this? Did you develop or locate any resources you would like to share with other teachers?

[Scott Bartholomew]

We found that using two identical rulers, one in each hand, will allow students to compare the response of pushing different objects with the same deflection of the ruler.  Students will see that one of the objects will speed up faster than the other and "get away" from them.

[Fred Meshna]

Scott,
I have already tried you suggestion and it worked well,
Fred

[Judy Scheffler]

How flexible are the rulers are will any ruler work?

[Ken Dugan]

An extension of this kind of demonstration when you get circular motion is to give the students a broom and have them try to make a bowling ball move in a circle around themselves. Demonstrates that the centripetal force is always toward the center of the circular motion.

[Becky Reynolds]

An extension of this kind of demonstration when you get circular motion is to give the students a broom and have them try to make a bowling ball move in a circle around themselves. Demonstrates that the centripetal force is always toward the center of the circular motion.

That sounds like a great extension.

[Jeff Briggs]

An extension of this kind of demonstration when you get circular motion is to give the students a broom and have them try to make a bowling ball move in a circle around themselves. Demonstrates that the centripetal force is always toward the center of the circular motion.

  Another idea in the same vein would be to set up an obstacle course in the lab with tape marking the lane the bowling ball must follow.  Make sure you put at least 2-90 degree turns in the course.  Run it as a race (ie timed) so the students can see the effect of trying to slow the ball for the turns.

[Sushma Sharma]

Making table for step 2, 3 and 4 helped calibrating force meter. We held the meter rod next to plastic ruler to measure bend and figured out that one cm is about one finger width

[Donna Wolz]

An extension of this kind of demonstration when you get circular motion is to give the students a broom and have them try to make a bowling ball move in a circle around themselves. Demonstrates that the centripetal force is always toward the center of the circular motion.

  Another idea in the same vein would be to set up an obstacle course in the lab with tape marking the lane the bowling ball must follow.  Make sure you put at least 2-90 degree turns in the course.  Run it as a race (ie timed) so the students can see the effect of trying to slow the ball for the turns.

I really like both of these suggestions. I am going to give them a try.