It's getting complicated....Physics here I come!

On Monday we finished our worm lab for about 10 minutes and reviewed notes, then we started our bubble gum lab.  For this lab we were not tied down to a lab sheet with questions and an exact procedure which was my favorite part. We had free reign to make whatever experiment we wanted to test time and speed with gum. Our group tested if time would affect Nicholas's chewing speed.  We tested it in 30 second intervals. After each interval we recorded the number of chews in that time period. Our hypothesis was that the more time would result in a lower percentage of chews.

On Tuesday we actually got to test the experiment. I thought constructing our own experiment helped me to better understand and learn the scientific method. Before doing this lab we had to follow a lab procedure but in this we didn't because we got to make up our own experiment.  In our experiment we found that it did not affect his chewing speed but it increased over time .

On Wednesday  we had our first quiz in physics. For this quiz we had to study basic physics terms such as velocity, acceleration, distance and displacement. I often got these terms confused a lot. One thing I had trouble on during the quiz was applying what I knew to the questions. I knew what the terms meant I just didn't know how to apply them. I feel like if I had read the questions more carefully then I would have been more clear of what the question was asking a lot better. I can definitely improve on this for the next quiz.

On Thursday since it was our first quiz in physics we reviewed for most of the class on Thursday. Most of the topics I missed on the quiz were scalar and vector related. One thing I can improve on this week is learning the vector and scalar definitions and relearning the units so I can do better on my next test.

On Friday we did an activity where we went around the room to each table and did a different activity regarding physics. Before that activity we tried to balance a penny on a card that sat on our finger and if you pulled the card out from under the penny at just the right time the penny would sit on your finger. This works because you are moving the card not the penny. I know it's hard to believe but try it you will be surprised.

Next week we will start Newton's laws so the activities we did were mostly based around that. I didn't get to do all of the activities but I got to do most of them.  For Science Olympiad this week I spent about an hour building and testing  two more bridges.  We learned from breaking the bridges that the "new" design we had tried out had not been working because it broke almost instantly when the sand was being poured.
This week I can definitely say there is a lot of things I need to improve on but I have also learned a lot.

For this week's link it is all about Newton's Laws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn34mnnDnKU