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Phy 242
Your 'collaborative labs' report has been received. Scroll down through the document to see any comments I might have inserted, and my final comment at the end.
** Collaborative Labs_labelMessages.txt **
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You will participate during the semester in two series of collaborative lab activities.
The first is designed to be relatively painless, and to begin to develop a degree of teamwork and collaboration.
These activities are designed for teams of four individuals, each with a specific function:
The designer will come up with the idea for the activity and will specify for other team members how the activity is to be conducted.
The experimenter will follow the designer's instructions to set up the experiment and collect data.
The analyzer will analyze the data.
The interpreter will describe what the results mean.
For each series of activities, you will participate in four different investigations, one as designer, another as experimenter, another as analyzer and another as interpreter.
As each investigation progresses, you will follow the work of your fellow team members.
Please summarize the above, as best you can, in your own words:
We will be working collaboratively with a team of four people, each with different roles. The designer is in charge of developing an idea for the activity and will instruct the other team members how to perform the activity.
The experimenter will follow the directions of the designer in order to set up the experiment and collect data.
The analyzer will analyze data.
The interpreter will interpret the data and determine what it means.
For each activity we will participate once as a designer, once as experimetenter, once as analyzer, and once as interpreter
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The first series of activities will be spread out over the first half of the semester, the second series over the second half of the semester.
The first series will be based on systems you have seen in the Key Systems videos.
You will begin by describing at least three ideas for investigations related to the Key Systems videos. Valid ideas will ultimately be developed proposals, each of which will describe a question that could be investigated and tested using simple materials such as those seen in the videos. You will eventually develop three proposals, one of which will be chosen for an investigation. You will be the designer for that investigation.
At this point we're just beginning to explore ideas for the first series of investigations. Your instructor will work with you to further develop your ideas, and perhaps to explore other related possibilities.
Right now you don't have a wide variety of experimental techniques available to you, so this first series of investigations will be relatively simple.
List below three ideas for things you think might be fairly easy to test, based on the systems you have seen so far.
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If you drop two objects of different masses from the same height, which object will reach the ground first? Or will they reach the ground at the same time? Why do these results occur?
Does the type of liquid escaping from a cylinder effect the amount of time for the liquid to escape the cylinder?
What kind of material is best for minimizing the amount of friction on an incline?
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Discuss your first idea. How do you think it might be tested? What sort of items do you think might be required? How do you think your idea might be tested?
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I think my idea could be tested by getting perhaps 10 different objects, all of different masses and dropping them from the same height to observe which objects are hitting the ground faster, which are hitting slower, or if they're all hitting at the same time. I would use this data to determine what characteristics (mass, the type of material, etc.) tended to cause objects to hit the ground at certain times.
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Discuss your second idea. How do you think it might be tested? What sort of items do you think might be required? How do you think your idea might be tested?
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I would set this lab up by having 4 or 5 different liquids with known densities and put each of them into the same cylinder that has a hole on the bottom of it. I would then proceed to fill the cylinder with one of the liquids. I would have a timer ready to time the amount of time it takes the liquid to empty out of the cylinder. I would repeat this for the other liquids. I would observe the data and determine what factors might cause certain liquids to escape faster than others.
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Discuss your third idea. How do you think it might be tested? What sort of items do you think might be required? How do you think your idea might be tested?
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I would test this by starting with about 6 or 7 different materials and create inclines with the different surfaces. I would then roll the same object down all the inclines with the different materials and time how long it takes the object to get down. I would time the object rolling down each material multiple times to obtain an average time that it took to roll down. I would compare the average times of all the materials and determine which material had a faster average roll time and therefore potentially the least amount of friction assuming all other factors were consistently kept constant.
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Your instructor is trying to gauge the typical time spent by students on these activities. Please answer the following question as accurately as you can, understanding that your answer will be used only for the stated purpose and has no bearing on your grades:
Approximately how long did it take you to complete this activity?
30 minutes
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Great ideas. Thanks. I'll be getting back to you on these labs once I get more responses.
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