I learned about physics mainly. I knew almost nothing about physics before we started this because in my past schools and last year we didn't do much with physics so I didn't really know anything about it. So I learned about energy and most importantly how energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred, I learned Newtons Laws and what each one is, and I learned about G Force and where to find the two kinds on a rollercoaster. I liked how this project was almost completely hands on. We had to build a rollercoaster from scratch, just using reusable materials. I thought it was a great way to learn about physics and definitely kept me interested. If I could improve my project I would probably start it at a higher level, than we did now. It was a bit low who we had to go all the way down to the floor and even then work up when we were about 3/4's of the way through.
Monday, June 9, 2014
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Saturday, May 31, 2014
Physics Project Reflection #3
I feel like in our progress we are working well together and we are moving along. But something that sets us back is having to redo things every time we go out and work. Things are moved, destroyed, knocked over etc. So sometimes when we get to work on our project during class, it's basically just resetting or redoing things that we had already done. That's been pretty frustrating. Inertia has affected our project in this one particular spot where we have the track going off the table then onto a loop on a box then onto the floor. When we first decided to do that we of course tried it out many times, and almost every time (before we had fixed it in place to where it's not extremely steep) the marble woud hit the first bit of the track then fly straight off. Getting that bit to work was also a bit frustrating. We have been working well together and agreeing on most things but most disagreements are fixed fast with a compromise and we move on from it to continue to make progress on our rollercoaster.
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Physics Project Reflection #2
The pros of using tape for the project is that it's easy to use and we can get tape almost anywhere. The cons of using tape is that tape won't hold everything, and as time goes on it may stop holding things together. While we were working on our loop we had a bit of a problem with too little energy. We couldn't get the marble to make the full trip in the loop. So we had to adjust the track before the loop to give the marble more energy to make sure it would make the loop. I feel pretty good about the progress we've made, we are getting pretty far with building but we still have to decorate it and make sure our theme is prominent. What's been is that it seems that almost every time we come to work during class our loop that has been stuck to the table is moved or pushed over. Seeing our project actually working and succeeding almost all the time is pretty cool and every time the loop works perfectly with energy still left over to keep moving is great.