One week away from VICTORY!!!!!

On Monday we finally tested our catapults. I had been waiting to test our catapult all weekend so the suspense was high. We did three events that tested power,accuracy,and distance. Our catapult did the best in the accuracy round. We got four out of five cotton balls in the bucket every time. We did okay in the other tests but not as well as the accuracy round. After we tested our catapult we worked on our data sheet. One way our group could have improved on the catapult was by changing our design completely. Our design had too many flaws because we had to replace the spoon twice and cut out the back panel of the bow for it to even work.

On Tuesday we had a"snow day" I put snow day in quotes because it was more ice than snow. I don't really care if we had snow or not I am glad we didn't have to go to school.

On Wednesday we worked on finishing our lab. One thing I learned from this lab is projectile motion. I learned that a projectile has both horizontal and vertical velocity. We also reviewed our unit two notes. We reviewed terms such as terminal velocity, free fall, and weightlessness. Aside from what you may think free fall is, free fall is when the only force acting on you is gravity. You can only be in free fall when in a vacuum or space. Weightlessness is when you have no force of support on your body. Have you ever been on a roller coaster and you feel like your stomach is jumping for a split second? This feeling is considered being weightless.

On Thursday we worked on a new lab. In this lab we tested terminal velocity by dropping a coffee filter from different heights. We dropped it in intervals of 25 cm. For each different height we had to calculate average speed and velocity. After we had our data we did two graphs. I think two things we could have improved on this lab is keeping the coffee filter steady and keeping the meter stick straight.

On Friday we  worked on finishing our coffee filter lab. I had a hard time with the graph because it was different than some of the graphs I had done before. In this lab we learned about terminal velocity. Terminal velocity is when the net force on an object is zero so it stops accelerating. I think this lab helped me see visually what terminal velocity is.

For Science Olympiad this week we all worked extra hard because we we are only a week away. We took another trip to Panera Bread to make sure we were prepared. I worked on Picture This for almost all of the time we were there. I worked on Picture This for about 2 hours. I worked for bout an hour redesigning some features of my rocket and then met on Sunday at the park to shoot off the bottle rockets. We met for about an hour launching rockets.

For this week's link it is all about SO. http://www.sciencenc.com/