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Phy 231
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:
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We will be working collaboratively on two sets of group labs, each set giving us an opportunity to fill four different roles: designer (coming up with the idea and
planning how it will be carried out), experimenter (setting up the experiment and gathering data), analyzer (analyzing the data) and interpreter (interpreting the
meaning of the results).
We will be in touch with the other three members of team throughout each experiment.
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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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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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First, I would attach a single washer to a chain of rubber bands of a certain length and hold both the top of the rubber band chain and the washer in one hand in front
of a measuring device. Then I would drop the washer but hold onto the top of the rubber band chain and see how far the washer initally falls, stretching the rubber
band chain, before bouncing back up. Then I would repeat the exercise with more than one washer. The experiment would be designed to measure distance of stretch with
respect to number of washers.
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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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This experiment replicates the first car-rolling-down-book experiment we did, but changes the heights of the top of the book. So we'd choose 5 different starting
heights (but keep the distance travelled the same), then time each of them at the midpoint and end of the ramp. This would allow us to compare angle of incline to
average velocity (and rate of acceleration, possibly).
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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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Here, we will put our ramp on top of a box so that it is up above the surface of the table. Now, when the car rolls off the edge of the book, it will fall through the
air for a while before it hits the ground. We will start the car from an evenly-spaced series of points on the ramp (so, changing the total distance it rolls and
accelerates before falling), and mark the horizontal distance of each landing point from the edge of the book. This allows us to measure forward momentum (I'm not
sure if I'm using that term exactly right, but I think I'm in the ballpark) with respect to acceleration time and/or average velocity at the time of falling.
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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?
15 minutes
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Very good ideas. I have almost enough responses on the collaborative labs to begin assigning groups and experiments, so we'll follow up on these ideas soon.
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