Science Methods

  In lab today we answered these questions with what prior knowledge we had:  What are your best understandings about it? (Lab questions prior knowledge) 1. The phases of the moon occur when the clouds cover different parts of the moon  2. Seasons are caused by the location of the earth to the sun as well as the months on the calendar  3. A lunar eclipse is caused by clouds covering the moon  What is your best understanding of? (Lab questions with learned knowledge)  1. The phases of the Moon occur because of the Moon and its orbit around the Sun and Earth, different placements are what cause different moon phases.   2. Seasons are caused by the Earth's tilt and how the axis of the tilt points towards a certain hemisphere 3. A lunar eclipse is caused by when the Sun casts Earth's shadow on the Moon when it is in orbit  What were the three big questions:  1. How the phases of the Moon occur?  2. What causes the seasons?  3. What...

  This week in lab we did an egg experiment where we first dropped an egg from 1 meter then dropped an egg from 2 meters, into a bowl that we filled with sand, straw, rubber, and woodchips to mimic materials found in a playground setting. In this experiment, we were able to customize the items we chose to place in our bowls based on how well we thought the items would protect our egg from cracking. What we found in this experiment is some objects would create a softer cushion than others to protect the egg from cracking, we also discovered that when the egg was dropped it caused the majority of items to disburse out of the bowl. When reading the textbook I was able to discover why the items disburse out of the bowl and that is because of the transfer of kinetic energy. When an item is dropped (the item being the egg) the energy of that item is transferred to the surrounding air or surrounding items (the surrounding items being the objects in the bowl). This is important information...

  This week in lab my group and I tested the effect weight has on how fast you can swing. Our result of this test showed the weight of a swing rider does not affect the speed of the swing. As a group, we were confused by this conclusion, because our hypothesis was originally the heavier the swing rider the faster the swing would go. When attending the lecture on Thursday, I was able to understand why weight does not affect the speed in which the rider goes. According to Newton's second law F=MA, the force of a larger object takes a slower acceleration time as well as is held down by stronger forces of gravity because the object weighs more. For smaller objects force causes objects to accelerate faster as well as is held down by less gravitational force because the object weighs less. Knowing these two things we can gain a better understanding of why swinging speed is not affected by weight. Tying this description of Newton's second law in the textbook if we want the swing with ...

  During the lab, my partner Olivia and I chose to work on the effect slope has on the speed of a race car. In our findings, we saw that the higher the slope the faster the car went down the slide. Olivia and I predicted this but we were unsure of why we believed this other than this was just a fact we knew. According to the textbook, net force plays a role in forces of motion if equal force is applied to both ends of an object the object does not move, but if the force of an object is unbalanced this causes the object to move. Looking at this through Olivias and I's experiment we are able to see there is a force unbalance. The force unbalance is what causes our race car to move, and the reason the car moves fastest at a higher angle is because the unbalance is more prominent. The lecture today also talked about how steepness affects the speed of something which is important to understand when looking at Olivia and I's experiment. According to the lecture the more tilt of an ob...