Laser Laws Blog Post:

I honestly can’t believe how much I have done with PLP so far this year. I have completed so many amazing projects that I can’t keep track, but anyway back to the point. This scimatics project was probably the most fun one that I was done so far. For this project we worked with lasers, triangles, The Pythagorean Theorem and the Laws of Reflection to create a laser triangle display, which is fully built, functional, and labeled. But to get to that we had to first go through all the milestones and stepping stones. The driving question for this project was “How can we test the Pythagorean theorem and the laws of reflection?” Making our laser model showed and answered this, by showing that the laser could make a right angle triangle. We also wrote down all the information needed on the piece of cardboard our model was on.

Milestone 1:

The First Milestone that we did for this project was one of the important milestones. This milestone included us playing a fun and interesting laser tag game with real lasers. For this we had to use mirrors to reflect our laser so that it could hit the other teams target. This was a fun way to learn about lasers and reflection. Another thing we did for this project was start a mind map with questions we had about light and what we already knew about light and lasers. Here is the final product of my mind map after working on it throughout the project.

Milestone 5:

Another one of the important milestones was Milestone Five. This was the last milestone that we did before writing our blog posts. Milestone five was the milestone that we actually got to create our laser model. Before this milestone we tried out lots of different experiments before actually making the real model like we did in this milestone. For this we laser model we had to write our question, hypothesis, the materials we needed, the procedure, the data/analysis, and my group also added what we did to extend. If you look down below you can see the answers to everything we needed to write down.

Curricular competencies:

Questioning and Predicting:

For this competency I got accomplished because used most of my time efficiently for learning and did project work without distractions. If I used my time a little more efficiently I think I would have gotten extending so I will think about that next time. 

Communicating and Representing:

This competency showed how I accomplished making a scientific experimental procedure which developed and implemented with all required steps of the scientific method, a conclusion about the laws of reflection and the Pythagorean theorem which was formulated and supported by the precise measurements. 

Applying and Innovating:

For this competency my group got extending for having the laser triangle be accurately planned, build, labeled and measured. Doing this showed and answered the driving question which was “Can we test and utilize both the Pythagorean theorem and the laws of reflection by using right angle triangles?” 

I had a lot of fun doing this project, and am really happy on how the final project turned out. But of course I could not have done it without my group members Ava, Hannah, and Sara. One of my favourite things that we did in this project was getting to create the final model, and getting to decorate it with our spare time. Something that I had a hard time with was the very first trial model we made because at first I did not really understand what  we were supposed to do. In the end I’m really amazed with how lasers work, and everything that they can do, create, and show. I’m happy with how the first project that I’ve done this new year turned out, and I’m excited for the next.

-Makenna Crawford