Science and Engineering Practices

Science and Engineering Practices

Performance activity: Pendulum

Preparation: Have a wall to put pendulums on to graph data as shown here:

Tape a strip of adding machine tape (if a whiteboard is not available) on the wall. On either the whiteboard or adding machine tape put equal marks labled 1 → 20 from left to right.

Need a different pendulum length for every two or three teachers.

Pendulum is made from a length of string and a metal washer (or two)

Need tape to put all pendulums on the wall at the end.

Tool: Online stopwatch to time pendulum swings

http://www.online-stopwatch.com/bomb-countdown/

I.  Show the Tracks slide.

A.  Have participants share observations and inferences from this slide.

II.  Remember that words can be used as data.

A.  You will receive some words, please consider these questions as you look at the words.

i.  Ask participants to consider where they think these words came from.

ii.  Ask participants to consider what evidence they have about the origin of these words.

iii. Have participants be prepared to explain how this is similar to science observations.

B.  Project the list of words from the PowerPoint

i.  Have partners decide where they think the words came from. You may want to have a few groups share their ideas.

C.  Project and share the Taylor Malik poem “Undivided Attention” http://www.taylormali.com/poems-online/undivided-attention/

III. Show slide about collecting data not analyzing words.

A.  Demonstrate the pendulum swing.

i.  Show what angle to begin the swing at

ii.  Discuss how to count pendulum swings (e.g. back and forth is 1 swing, you can have a partial swing such as ¼)

B.  Project the countdown timer and ask teachers to work with a partner to begin swinging their pendulum and counting swings as you start the countdown timer.

C.  Participants graph their data by taping their pendulum at the appropriate location on the wall.

i.  Note the relationship between length of pendulum and number of swings.

ii.  Notice how it makes a visible graph

D.  Discuss the following questions:

i.  What differences do you see between the different pendulums.

ii.  What pattern do you observe?

E.  Facilitator shows a new pendulum with a different length than all that were previously used.

i.  Ask teachers to predict where on the graph this pendulum would fit.

ii.  Ask what evidence is used to make this inference.

iii. Test the pendulum to verify teacher predictions.

iv.  Is it possible to predict the location of an unlimited length pendulum based on this data?

v.  Explain that collaboratively we know about an infinite number of possibilities and predictions about pendulum swings.

IV.  Technology piece: Create a graph: http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createagraph/default.aspx?ID=e6b1645e25c54aef8b7345ce705bff3d

A.  Create a line graph comparing the pendulum length on the x axis and number of swings on the y axis.