How much can I tell them? How much do I need to leave up to their imaginations? What I want to say is, “Design an experiment to determine the relationship between drop height and bounce height.” But on the first day of physics class, that will sound like Greek to them. **** Note from above: This past year I struggled with how to present to students how they need to go about an inquiry based lab. How does the slope of the line describe a characteristic of the ball? In the discussion this time, we won’t compare accuracy of results, rather we will compare balls and graphs. When each group “goes to bat” this time, they will have significantly better results. This time though, I require each group to graph their data (Discuss the dependent and independent variables), and put a sketch of their graph on their white boards. In their presentations, I will ask them “what do you think caused errors in your method?” “How would you do this again?”.Students will then write up on white boards their method, prediction, results, and they will present. One at a time, I go around and each group “goes to bat.” I will video each group to see how accurate their predictions are.Don’t let them give you a range, have an exact number. Give them a few minutes to predict from which height they need to drop it so that it bounces back to 77cm. Give them their “target bounce height.” This past year, it made it 77-ish cm.This prevents them from “sneak testing” for the target bounce height. TAKE AWAY THE BALLS (make sure they remember their ball, this is when it helps to have different ones, or numbered ones).If you’re lucky, you’ll get a couple kids graphing the data (Probably like watching your kids helping to clean up after dinner without you having to ask them). Others will look for a common proportion in their data (“It bounces back up 55% of the original height every time”). Give students white boards and allow them to write down their data and present their “method of prediction.” The majority of the class will take data in a varying range, and just say “we’re gonna use our data table to predict the bounce-back height” which is fine. ![]() ![]() I give them the task: “Find a way to predict from which height to drop the ball so that it bounces back up to a certain height that I will give you” **** see note below I try to make the balls different so each group has a unique set of data. I divide the students into groups of 2 or 3 (not 4) and give each student a ball.I’m going to do this just with my Regents-level class, and not AP (the time crunch and all). I am a fan of this activity because it introduces students to how we take data, observe patterns, do graphs (with labels and units), and make predictions in this class. Last year, I did a “Ball Bounce” activity on my first day.
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