In this picture, we launched our ball and it landed in the cup. Our measurement in this picture was 305 cm.

Curricular Response

When we built our Ball Launcher, we explored the scientific method. We learnt how to use the scientific method in daily life where we identified problems, tried to create a solution and tried to use that solution to solve that problem. In our ball launcher challenge, we used inductive learning to find out what angle we needed to use first to get our first testing result (we used our previous knowledge of gravity and aerodynamics to get our angle knowing that if we aim it at a very high angle, the ball will stall mid-air and fall to the ground losing all of it’s velocity. If we aim the ball very low, the ball will get a negative vertical velocity and still go down. We used deductive learning to get a better angle after our first test to get a better aim and angle.

Core Competency Self Assessment and Creative Thinking

· It’s important to celebrate our accomplishments. Which SCIENTIFIC METHOD LAB are you the most proud of and why?
I am most proud of my ball launcher lab as it was our most successful lab yet. We explored parts of physics and building while making the launcher. Our team achieved a length of 305 cm and we ranked 4th in the class for the longest launch distance

· What strategies did you use to overcome those challenges? Describe in detail.
We faced many challenges in our lab such as our rubber band breaking or our cup splitting. Our group was resourceful so we fixed our device with the available resources. Our initial launch distance was near 300 cm but after fixing our device with the available resources, we increased our launch distance by 5 cm.

· Describe your experience with understanding of the Scientific Method doing the lab?

We explored how to make a hypothesis and how to test our hypothesis. We needed to make a control experiment to test if our hypothesis worked according to what we thought. We tested our design and it failed the first test. We used deductive learning to fix that and made our device better.

· Tell me how you did the following:

A) I demonstrated that I can create new things when I work in a group. My weakness sometimes is working alone. When I collaborate with the people in my team, I share my knowledge and also learn from other people’s ideas and build on it.

B) I demonstrated that I can build on the ideas of others when our group was making our sample draft. We all had different ideas but one point was the same in each of our ideas. The point was the launcher mechanism with a cup and rubber bands. We all contributed what we thought would be the best and combined them to get one amazing design

C) When trying new things, I expect setbacks and failure and use them to develop my ideas. An example of this from the Scientific Method labs would be when our ball launcher started to fall apart by splitting down the middle. We fixed it by making the pencils not move any further which was making the cup split. We finally fixed it and made our launcher work again.