Entry 4: week 5

The Fiestas 
     This week we had science two classes, and not a lot went on the first day, other than I flunked a test. Apparently, it isn't that difficult to miscount if you are under pressure. It's not that I didn't know how to convert the units it's just I got really panicky towards the end. However, the funny part is I did best on the stuff I thought I royally messed up on, that would be estimating/using powers of 10. I got only one wrong there, but on the super easy converting of like units and unlike units (i.e. metric to metric, standard to standard, and metric to standard) I only got three right. There was a small light at the end of the tunnel though, I can retest on that material and I know where I went wrong.
     On the same note of tests, we got our second test back on Tuesday. I did much better, getting all threes except on one standard. It had to do with identifying a directly proportional equation that was not linear. My first instinct was a linear equation, but the directions excluded that one, therefore I put an inversely proportional graph instead. In retrospect I now see how that is wrong, an inverse equation never even touches the axises and goes up down on one axis and up on the other, both of which contradict the definition of a proportional graph. The answers I could have put down could include a quadratic or exponential graph. The hard part of this mess of though was that both of these were in my notes and in my blog post from two weeks ago. I am kicking myself for not remembering that...

Pre-lab
On the second day we finally got out of our lecturing/discussion rut and did a lab. This lab was aimed at the relationship between the position of a buggy from a fixed point and how long it ran. We did however have an introduction to this concept on Tuesday. This was when our teacher kept having us explain were he was in relation to a fixed tile. From this we learned that a person can't just say "seven tiles from the counter", they have to give the distance the object moved, the direction it moved in, and it should be done in three different dimensions. It also showed that without a reference point it is very difficult to notice movement. Finally, the discussion also produced two definitions:

Reference point: A fixed object that is used to describe were another object is.

Position: Where an object is in relationship to the reference point and how the object moved, is oriented, and where the object is in relationship to other objects/space.

These definitions helped us in the lab that we did the next day.

The set-up

     In the lab that was done on Thursday we first had to measure how far a buggy traveled in a set amount of time in relationship to its starting position. Now, there was a lot of grey areas that the teacher let us to decide. For instance, how to measure the actual distance, where we measured on the car, how  many intervals of time we had, and how fast our buggy was going. Each of these factors were different from each group. For instance, while most groups used a piece of tape and premeasured the lengths my group decided to mark where the buggy was as it rode down the hallway. Another difference was the speed of the buggy. There was a pretty even split between the fast setting and the slow setting (I was in a slow group). The only thing that the class did consistently was measure the front of the buggy. We later found out though that we should have measured the back end. This is because every time the group had to mark the buggy's position we had to partially stop it which skewed our data.
        After the base line data was collected the next step was actually different from group to group. For instance, my group had to just redo the same experiment as mentioned above, but with the buggy going at top speed. Then there was another group who just had to alter the starting point.
    
The results
      At the end of the day we just put  the data on the whiteboards. This was extremely difficult for my group because we took a lot longer to just the equations. This is because instead of measuring the full length the buggy traveled we measured the distance from point to point. Therefore we had to convert those findings into an accumulative distance. In the end my group got an equation of y=6.4*x+.6 for the slow run. The equation above got an r squared value of .9999 and our five percent rule was .1%. This equation was also very consistent with other equations from other groups too. Then, on the fast test we got an equation of y=25*x+23.2. This had an r squared value of .9996 and a 5% rule of only 1%.  The only issue was that this test seemed to have been different from the other equations.
     In all the results from our version of the experiment seems really conclusive. The statement of  "if the buggy is going at a set speed then its position will increase proportionately" is supported a lot, however, all conclusions should be saved for after the whole class shares their findings.

Things that could be improved
We could try and improve how we actually measure the distance car went by using some high tech in order to eliminate the systematic error which was rampant throughout the experiment. A way to accomplish this is by having sensors that are synchronized with a timer mark how far the buggy ahs gone. We also might want to replace the batteries after each test in order to get the same amount of power from test to test. Finally, the path of the buggy should be fixed with the addition of some barriers.