Entry 3: week 4

Overview of the week:
Well this week was the week. We finally finished talking about all of our lab-o-rama labs. We did this by having only two groups white-board a particular lab. The progress of getting stuff done was also due to the fact that my class was actually able to focus on what they were doing, coupled with the fact that my teacher also set  some more boundaries it was inevitable. Lets just hope we can keep this up...

Specific views of the Labs:

The first lab was the pendulum lab. In that lab we had to find out the relationship of a pendulum's period (how long it takes to swing back and forth one time) and the mass on the pendulum. My first graph

suggested that no line would fit the data. However, that idea was challenged when two other groups found that a straight line going across the x axis fit that data extremely well. One culprit I can think of that effected my results was that I had used extremely small units on my Y axis and as a  result everything looked scattered, but the other groups did a much broader scale of .5 seconds instead of .1. That seemed to really help. Just this realization of what type of correlation took us a long time because we could not decide the name of the relationship. It turned out that there was no relationship. That led us to dicuss how many times we retsted the data, just because it seemed like something had to be wrong. Finally, we tried to come up with a 5% rule for that data but no conclusion was made.

Next, was the tile lab. In this lab we had to find the correlation of a piece of carpet's mass and its area. The discussion that took place in this lab was extremely difficult for me to participate in because my group did not get to that lab. This lab did however produce something interesting. One group had a polynomial graph and the other had a linear one. In addition to that issue, the group with the polynomial equation had a small outlier, that raised some questions. To find a solution we disscussed eaxh graph extensively, talking about the correlation coefficient, 5% rule, and common sense. Each correlation coefficient each was relatively close, 95% or higher, but the same could not be said for each group's 5% rule. Both groups had a high percentage, being within tenths of the cut off amount.
The linear result was however very slightly lower. The final nail in the polynomial vs. linear coffin came with common sense. My class did not expect a quadratic result, it didn't make sense that the mass would increase so sharply as time went on. It also didn't make sense for a negative amount of carpet (which is already impossible) to have the same mass as a physical piece of carpet. This lead us to the conclusion a of a linear correlation between the area and surface mass of the carpet.  The slope was .19 and the y-intercept was .18. As for the outlier in the polynomial group, that was said to be the result of rushing, which also could have caused them to have a polynomial.

Finally, there was my group's lab, the lever lab. In this lab we had to find the distance from the fulcrum that it would take for varying amounts of mass to balance 300 grams of mass 10 centimeters from the pivot point. This lab discussion was interesting because while my group got an exponential equation I got an inverse equation (this was in addition to the other groups findings which was also an inverse equation). This led to a bunch of discussions, the main one being "who was right". The reasoning for not using the power graph was 1: it wouldn't make sense for the distance to go up that fast, 2; the teacher said that there are very few equation in nature that are exponential, 3: the majority of the class got an inverse equation. Other factors that suppoted an inverse equation include the correlation coefficient on Wed, and common sense. Therefore, the general consensus was that the inverse equation was right. That isn't to say that there wasn't other topics that we talked about. Some include whether my equation was equivilant to the other inverse eqaution (the other group did thiers in inches, mine was in centimeters). It did however indeed match up. Then we discussed  a weird variable in power equation, e. It apparently is a number that appears in nature a lot and is like pi. Finally, we talked about what the end of an inverse line is called. It is called something like an assemetope (this is spelled phonetically because I do not have a spelling for it). We also learned the actual line of an inverse graph is called a hyperbola.

Other things we did.
After that we went over our first"fiesta" ,test,(I know I should have mentioned last week test but I had a bit of a brain fart). In the first test I did pretty well, getting all 2s or 3s, but I did learn a lot. For instance, after the first test I realized that I must make the variables specific to the situation. I also had clarification to the types of graphs there are, like a direct linear graph or an indirect graph (one goes up on both axises and the other has each axis go in different directions). These newly learned skills I took into the next fiesta, and as a result I think I finally got the other standards up to 3s. Finally, after the testing there was a PowerPoint on another standard we have to learn, and that was

conversions. For the most part it was all review, and that might be why I fell to the dark side and started to do stupid things like make towers with markers. That did however change when the teacher put up a measurement with the abbreviation of M. I was at such a loss, and started to panic a little. That is until he gave us the answer, which was that it stood for "mega". For me that was a new measurement and it was the equivalent of 1000 "kilos". That madness apparently went on higher, and that is something I know I must study before the next test.