Our final project of Quarter 2 was called “Laser Laws”. This project was about the law of reflection as well as learning about the Pythagorean Theorem. Like most projects we do in Scimatics 8, this project included some individual work, however the final product was made in groups. My group members were: cooperk/, samuelk/, lucap/. 

The driving question in this project was; “How can we test the Pythagorean theorem and the law of reflection?” There are many ways to test both theorems, however we did so in milestone 4 by combining Pythagorean theorem and the law of reflection into one experiment.

The law of reflection states that when a ray of light reflects off a surface, the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection.

The Pythagorean theorem states that the sum of the squares on the legs of a right triangle is equal to the square on the hypotenuse (the side opposite of the right triangle). In other words, a+b=c.

 

Activities that helped me understand the driving question:

 Like most scimatics projects I’ve done, one of our first tasks was to create a “Project Start Mind Map” in the app “Mind Node”

Our task was to list all of the things we already knew as well as questions we had about the Pythagorean theorem and the law of reflection. The only thing I knew about light at first was the speed of light and didn’t know much else. Later in the project we went back to our “Mind Map” and tried to give an answer to each of the questions we had.

 

 

During this project we also did numerous experiments testing the Pythagorean theorem and the law of reflection. In milestone 3, we did an experiment testing only the law of reflection in our groups. We used a raybox, protractor, mirror, paper, and a pencil to conduct the test. Our method in this experiment was first to test the law normally, by projecting the laser from a certain angle to see if it reflects at the same angle, and it did. Then to further test it, we moved the mirror slightly to see if that affected the angle that reflects, and we concluded that the law remains true no matter how you alter the different variables.

In milestone 5, we created a laser display with mirrors and a laser. We got to create a shape of our choice and accurately planned and measured it. This experiment was fun at the end because all of the groups put their displays out and we used a smoke machine so you could see the shape the lasers were creating.

Here’s our display:

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Cirricular Competencies:

Questioning and Predicting: Demonstrate a sustained intellectual curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest.

We demonstrated this by working hard on what we were assigned and by focusing in class. During the project I don’t think I was as focused as I should’ve been on the task at hand during times, However, I did a good job at getting work done in class and avoiding homework.

Communicating and Representing: Represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial, and symbolic forms.

We demonstrated this skill in milestone 4 by creating a right triangle with mirrors in the optics simulator. I first didn’t understand how to navigate through the optics simulator. I had thought we were testing the Pythagorean theorem and the law of reflection separately. I started to understand when I asked for help from a classmate and I started going in the right direction. 

Here’s what I created in the optics simulator: 

Applying and Innovating: Co-operatively design projects.

We demonstrated this by creating our laser display in milestone 5. I think that I personally contributed a good amount of effort into our display. However there were times where only 1 or 2 people in the group were actually contributing.

In conclusion, I learned a lot about light, how it reflects, and also about the Pythagorean theorem. I most enjoyed creating the laser display because seeing how cool it looked with the smoke machine was worth the work. However the hardest part of this project was exploring all of the different vocabulary words in the workbooks an being tested on our knowledge of them. In all, the best thing about this project was exploring scientific concepts as well as Mathematical concepts.