Name: ______Date: ______

Period #: ______

Save Fred Gummy Worm Lab

Background: Poor Fred! He was sailing along on a boat (your plastic cup) when a strong wind blew it upside down. Fred (your candy worm) ended up on top of the upside down boat. Unfortunately for Fred, his life preserver (your candy gummy saver) is still trapped under the boat. Your job is to place the life preserver firmly around Fred’s body, but you must obey the 3 rules:

  1. Fred may not fall into the “sea” (onto the table) more than one time. If he does, Fred drowns.
  2. You may not injure him in any way.
  3. You may only use the 4 paper clips to move Fred, the boat and the life preserver. You may not touch anything except the paper clips.

Problem: How can you get Fred from the top of the boat into the life preserver?

Part 1 Procedure:

  1. Discuss some ideas on how to save Fred with your table.
  2. Write down an initial procedure below. (Use can also use pictures!)
  3. Begin testing out your procedure with your team.
  4. Revise your procedure as needed. (Make sure your procedure is detailed when final. It will be attempted by other teams!)

Procedure:

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5.

Part 2 Procedure:

  1. Once you have saved Fred and written your final procedure. Pass your procedure to another team which will try to use it to save Fred in the same way you did!
  2. If the other team cannot figure out your procedure, re-write it on the back of this paper in more detail.

Procedure Revised (if needed):

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2.

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5.

Part 3: Analysis Questions

  1. The traditional steps of the scientific method are:
  1. State the problem.
  2. Create a hypothesis
  3. Test your hypothesis (Experiment)
  4. Analyze and record data
  5. Draw conclusions
  6. Share your finding with other scientists
  1. When you saved Fred, did you follow all of these steps in order?
  1. Do you think scientists always use and follow these steps in order? Explain why or why not.
  1. Do all scientific experiments only have one possible conclusion? Is it possible to solve the same problem in more than one way? Explain.
  1. Given the scientific problem “What causes forest fires?”
  1. Is it appropriate to test out your hypothesis? Why or why not?
  1. Develop a way to develop a plausible cause without testing it out.