PaytonKonekScienceMethods

 Week 7  1. What did you do in lab today? This week in the lab, we were tasked with creating a scale model of our solar system that included the Sun and the 4 planets closest to the Sun. The model needed to be scaled in terms of the accurate size of the planets and the sun and the distance between them. The main challenge that our group encountered was determining what size to make the sun. At first, we tried determining the size of the planet before working on the sun. This was hard because we wanted to make the planets a decent size visibly; however, this would require our sun to be way bigger than we could realistically accomplish. After failing to determine the sizes this way, we decided to start with the sun. Ultimately, we decided to use the globe of the Earth as our representation of the sun. Then, using the diameter of the globe, we scaled the rest of the planets to an appropriate size. This required the planets to be tiny, which was hard to make. Then, using the inter...

 Week 6  What did you do in Lab today?   This week in Lab we started by meeting our new professor, Ted. Then we started our exploration of the Earth, Moon, and solar system. To start, we did a formative assessment. Through this assessment, I learned that, as a class, we held a lot of misconceptions about space concepts. For example, one that I had was that the shape of our orbit around the sun and the distance from the sun played a role in determining seasons. I was quite shocked to learn that we are actually closest to the sun in January. These misconceptions are a result of a lack of science instruction in school. It was dumbfounding to learn that Iowa City schools only received 20 minutes of science instruction per week. For our main activity for the day, we turned on a light in the middle of the room and moved a ball around a globe to create moon phases.  What was the big question?       The big question that we focused on for our activity was...

 1.) How the phases of the moon occur? The position of the moon changes as it rotates around the earth, so we see a different amount of the moon that is reflecting the Sun’s light.  2.) What causes the seasons? The Earth’s orbit around the sun is not a a circle, but an Oval. So it the Earth is a different distance from the Sun at different points in its rotation. This causes the temeratures and season’s to change.  3.) What causes a Lunar Eclipse The Sun causes Earth’s shadow to cover the moon. 

  Week 5:  The big question addressed in lab, and a description of what you did. The big question that we attempted to answer in Lab this week was how to design a playground surface that is safe and durable. In order to do this, we used matierals to make a playground surface within a bowl and then dropped an egg from 1 and 2 meters into the bowl. Our group was not very successful at this task. We did a good job protecting the egg from the initial drop into the bowl, but we could not prevent the egg from bouncing out of the bowl. Also, it is difficult to keep the materials from flying out of the bowl due to the force exerted by the egg on the materials. Intitually, we started by putting rubber on the bottom and then covering it with hay. This combination caused the egg to bounce a lot, and the materials did not do a good job staying in the bowl. In our later attempts, we tried adding balls of plastic wrap as a cushion on the top of a bowl to absorb the shock like a pillow and p...

  Week 4  The big question addressed in lab, and a description of what you did.   We started Lab this week by breaking down the slide activity from last week. Some of the big takeaways were that rider weight doesn’t matter because acceleration and the force of gravity cancel out. A heavier rider has more gravity acting on them, but they take longer to accelerate. A lighter rider is the opposite. Also, height is important because more height means that a rider has more time to accelerate. This week, we had to work in our groups to come up with an investigation about swings. Our group chose to explore how weight impacts the time it takes a rider to swing back and forth. I would have expected a heavier weight to swing back and forth faster initially, but after the slide investigation, I thought that the results would be pretty similar. In order to carry out the investigation, we used a stick, a clamp, a string, a clamp, three washers of different weights, and a timer. We beg...

     Week 3 The big question addressed in lab, and a description of what you did.      This week in Lab, we were tasked with selecting a question that could we test relating to a slide, and then using a model to answer it. Our group decided to answer the question, “How does the material of the slide impact speed.” For our model, we used a long wooden stick and a Hot Wheels track as a slide, a car as the person going down the slide, and then we used aluminum foil and paper to cover the wood stick. This experiment was very difficult to carry out, after we covered the “slide” with a new material, it became more difficult for the car to stay on it. Additionally, the car would partially fall off the track and drag which caused a lot of variation in our speeds. However, when the car had a smooth run, the times were fairly consistently. So we concluded that the material of a slide does not play much of a role in speed. Also, since slid the car down on it...