The Endless Worksheet

This week was a relatively slow week again. This time we did three things. The first (and longest) thing was go over our homework, which was very easy to do, however, the conversation that came from it, not so much. The conversation focused on explaining two graphs and each meant. For instance, do the two cyclist start at the same point, who is traveling faster, are their velocities the same ever, and what is happening at 5 seconds (no, cyclist A, no, they are at the same position). These questions were again easy to answer because most the we just had to look at the graph. However, some discrepancies came into play on the first graph. For instance, is velocity and speed the same thing? This question stumped most of us, and even at the end of the day we never really came to a conclusion. This is because speed=distance/time and we thought so did velocity. Then, the argument for them not being the same was the fact that velocity has a set direction. That was then compared to speed and how it is connected to position, which, as mentioned before has many dimensions. This theory isn't necessarily the most accurate, though. This is because according to some additional research  velocity is constantly being compared to is position from the starting point and speed is merely how fast an object moves. It is sort of like mass and weight, while on the streets everyone uses them interchangably they are completely different. Here is an article to further explain the difference between velocity and speed...  http://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/1dkin/u1l1d.cfm

After that little snafu, there was another discussion on whether slope actually meant speed/velocity (the slash is because we still weren't sure which one applied here). Most of us thought that yes it was directly related to speed, however, that theory was tested when we noticed on the second graph that it had a negative slope. We thought this because the graph showed change in distance/ change in time which is the equation for speed. The negative slope was confusing but manageable because of the discussion from last week. This is because we assumed that the reference point from which the bicyclists started from was fixed and therefore each bicyclists was traveling in opposite directions in order for bicyclist A to loose distance. That led to the conclusion that the speed is just the absolute value of the slope. That is because even though bicyclist A lost distance is had to loose distance at some rate (i.e. speed).

After a whole day spent on checking the worksheet came the discussion on our blogs. Now, this doesn't really have much to do with physics so here was our conclusions in a nut shell. We will have to read two peoples blog every week, comment on them using the acronym NICE (new ideas, improvements, complement, and explanation), and we will rotate every month- progress report. This whole idea was to see other people's point-of-view and to improve our own blogs. I do believe that this will help us tremendously, as it is I hope the people who have been reading these blogs consistently will see some differences as the year progresses.

Finally, we ended the week with trying to do a lab. Now, this lab wasn't a traditional one, we never really got to finish and we had to try and use a motion sensor to recreate these graphs. This was inspired by the worksheet from Monday. Now, there were some very difficult points for my group, because not only were we missing a person but we also couldn't get the sensor to work. We connected it the computer the right way but no matter what we couldn't get a reading off of it. We tried a total of 5 times and only one test produced actual results. Also, the results we got weren't what we expected. I just hope that Wednesday will be better...

On another note here are some things I want to try to do. To begin with I need to try to stop explaining things and learn to be quiet more so, especially when it comes to predictions. This is something that my teachers have been stressing and it is extremely difficult, especially in science. I know to most people in my class notice I rarely talk, but in smaller groups I talk way too much. I also need to work on listening to other people's ideas more so. I currently listen to the people but not as intently as I should. Finally, I need to try and make blog more interesting/ fresh. I hope I will get some ideas from some of the other blogs I will be reading.