Curricular Response

The golf tower challenge improved my knowledge of the Scientific Method in the way I was able to improve my inductive learning skills by observing the experiment and inferring results. I observed that the taller the tower became as we added newspaper cylinders, it began to fold in on itself. In the process, the structure became more unstable and affected how tall we were able to build it. This suggests, that the base of our tower was not sturdy enough to acquire larger amounts of weight. It also suggests that the taller a structure is, it requires stronger building materials which we did not have. I came to these conclusions through deductive learning.

Core Competency Self Assessment and Creative Thinking

The scientific lab I’m the overall most proud of would be the golf tower. I feel this way because my partner and I persevered and were able to make changes when our initial design was roughly only 2 feet tall, compared to our final structure being 6 feet tall. In the process I learned how to make the tower stronger to support more height.

The main challenge for us in this activity was our base legs being slightly uneven, causing the tower to tilt/tip as the structure got progressively taller. We overcame this by cutting the tip of the cylinder that was at the top of the tower at a slanted angle. This is where they golf ball was placed. This allowed for a change in weight, for the tower to now lean in the opposite direction of the original lean. This compensated for the uneven leg base.

I learned more about the scientific method through this experiment by formulating a hypothesis about what would happen in the experiment and then testing it. Through using observation, we can infer results that either confirm or deny the original hypothesis.

I demonstrated that I can create new things when I built a tower out of newspaper that was 6 feet tall and could hold the weight of a golf ball.

Image of my golf tower :

Image of my ball launcher :