Blog Post Week 5

 


1. This week in lab, we continued to look at the question, how can we support play that is exciting but not dangerous? For this we looked at the specific question, how can we design a safe and durable playground surface? For this, we modeled a child's fall with an egg. Our challenge was to prevent an egg from breaking when dropped from a height of 1-meter. Our surface could not be any thicker than our bowl. We were able to choose from various materials to place in the bowl. We had options such as rubber, hay, saran wrap, and sand. We chose to try the rubber. This worked at 1-meter. The egg did bounce when it hit the rubber, but it did not crack. We then tried 2-meters and it bounced then cracked even after adding hay and saran wrap. In this lab, we learned that too much force will break an egg. But the more gradually the egg slows down, the smaller the force. 

2. We did not have lecture this week. 

3. Pendulums and Energy 

I learned that energy can take many different forms such as energy in fields, thermal energy, and energy of motion. I also learned that kinetic energy is proportional to the mass of the moving object and grows with the square of its speed. It was most helpful to learn this as well as put an energy lens on our lab. I learned how energy was transferred in our egg experiment. When the egg bounced, the energy transferred from the egg to the surface, then the surface compressed and sprang back and the elastic deformation of the surface stored potential energy. The energy is transferred back to the egg as kinetic energy. When the egg did not bounce, the surface materials flew off. The energy remained in the surface as kinetic energy of particles. The energy was not transferred to the egg when this happened. I thought it was interesting to also connect this lab back to our chemistry unit where we looked at how air particles moved and we were able to connect this with how energy is transferred to these air particles. 

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