On Thursday at the Sigma Xi workshop they worked with something called "The Daredevil Project". During the beginning of the presentation the teacher noted extreme sports and he asked the question: How do the guys who make the jumps know where to land?
During this workshop they modeled this theory hands-on. Broken into three groups they used materials like easels, chairs, foam tubes, foam cups, a marble, and tape to build this model.
In this lesson they focused on many physical aspects such as trajectory, speed, and initial velocity. Their models modeled a daredevil's jump while trying to make them easier for the marbles to have a higher trajectory using the materials provided. They were asked what their negligible, constant, and independent variables were that would affect the marble's trajectory. They had to find a way to measure them and to identify them on or in their model.
The goal in this exercise was to know enough about the physics of their model where they could hit a cup on the floor of the room to gain points. The group with the most points after a certain number of trials won. Before their competition they collected and analyzed data from their models in a graphing applet. They used the applet to show a graph of the data they entered and tried to predict the initial velocity and where their marbles will land. Once they calculated all of their information they predicted from what height they needed to drop the marble.
The second activity involved modeling energy movement and how water flows. In this they used water, graduated cylinder-like tubes, a plastic storage box, a pitcher, and sifters (used to separate dirt). The students learned about ways to store energy and water. Pressure energy, height (potential) energy, and kinetic (motion) energy all effect how water moves in some way. They modeled this by putting water into a tube and seeing how fast it came out. Dr. Love explained that the water at the top of the tube has no pressure energy but has potential energy and when you let the water drain out it begins to be kinetic. The water at the bottom has pressure and when its let out it will have kinetic energy. After, the students modeled this in Vensim, a computer modeling program.