Blog 1

9/14

Lab:

This week in the lab as a class, we talked about different aspects that affect a rider's speed down a slide. Some of the things we talked about in class involved someone’s clothes, the height of the slide and more. We then worked with our table groups to come up with our own questions and then to answer them. My group's question was how does weight affect the speed of a writer? We used film canisters with different amounts of sand in them, so they each had a different weight and then did multiple trials to test how fast each weight took to get to the end of the “slide”. Our findings concluded that as the weight of a rider increases, the speed of the writer increases then stays relatively stable. 

During Thursday's lecture, we talked about forces. More specifically we talked about what the force is in different aspects that affect forces. For example, we talked about how a force is a push or a pole and how a force is required for objects to speed up, slow down or change directions. We also talked about how forces affect someone riding a slide. 

Focus questions:

1. What did you learn?

• Something I learned from the reading is the definition of velocity. I knew about what velocity was, but didn’t know the exact description which is said to be how fast and what direction something moves.

2. What was most helpful?

• The key takeaways at the end of the rating were the most helpful because they were able to sum up the most important parts of the reading in just a few points.

3. What do you need more information on?

• I think it would be interesting to have a little bit more information as to why people in the US prefer different measurements compared to other people around the world.

4. What questions/concerns/comments do you have?

• I found it super interesting throughout the reading how the different sections like speed distance directions explained exactly what they are and how to describe them.