Physical Science: Presentation

Students delivered a presentation on the engineering projects they tested last week. They were asked to provide an overview of their design, their thinking behind it, and the results of their testing, linking back to Newton’s Laws to explain why things did (or didn’t) work. The presentation is meant to convince the project’s imaginary customer to develop their design into an actual product. I need to keep revising how I approach the presentation. I’d like to use it as an assessment over Newton’s Laws, and students make some great connections between the project and the science content, but as soon as they get to the presentation, those connections seem to disappear.

Physics: Newton’s 2nd Law

Students finished data collection and graphing for their Newton’s 2nd Law lab. The netbook cart I reserved actually worked, which meant students saw the advantages of graphing in the classroom. Several groups had a point that looked like an outlier, and their question was usually “Can we grab a track to check that point?” rather than “Can we ignore that point?” I like the first question a lot better.