Week 4 Blog

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 Lab:

The big question asked in lab this week was "how can we support play that is exciting but not dangerous?". We finished our discussion about slides and what effects a riders speed going down the slide. Our new big question was "what effects how long it takes a swing to go back and forth?". During this week's lab, my group and I investigated how the release angle affected the time it takes for the swing to move back and forth. We did three trials for three different release angles and recorded our results in a table. Once we found the averages for each angle, we found that the smaller the angle, the shorter the distance traveled was. This was different from our hypothesis, the higher the angle the faster it swings, because we weren't looking for the speed of the swing. We decided to focus on the time it took to swing back and forth instead of the speed. 




Lecture: 

During this week's lecture, we learned that rider weight doesn't affect the swings and the rider speed. The force of gravity on heavy objects and their acceleration cancel each other out. Energy is something that can be transferred to one system to another because it is neither created or destroyed. We learned that things slow down because an outside force is acting upon them. For example, while the swing is swinging, the air particles collide with it to slow it down. 


Pressbook:

The pressbook reiterates everything we learned in lecture this week. It talks a lot about the pendulums that we went over in lecture. I learned that the different length of the strings caused the swings to swing at different speeds. I also learned that Galileo’s observations led to the creation of accurate pendulum clocks. In experiments, students can explore the effects of string length, mass, and angle on pendulum motion, and they can observe patterns in motion to predict future movements


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