Hello! Welcome back to my blog. My last project I did in Scimatics was Laser Laws. We got to work with our group to create a laser display that proves the law of reflection and Pythagorean Theorem. The first thing we always do before actually start building, is building knowledge. Just like last Scimatics project which you can check out here. We did textbook reading and workbooks, about math, and science; all the topics we needed to grasp.
The driving question for this project was “How can we test the Pythagorean Theorem and the law of reflection?” We got assigned a group and in my group there was Gwenyth, Christian, Caden, and me! I recommend checking out their blog posts.
Once we had a better idea of the law of reflection, we got to start planning out our actual laser display. We figured out a Pythagorean triple that we would use on our base, and we also learned how how to power the laser using batteries. For our theme we worked together to come up with ideas for decorations. Gwen brought in paint markers and we got to decorate our board with planets and starts.
We had a bunch of issues when we were actually getting our laser to work. The setup wasn’t to complicated but we just couldn’t get the laser to actually work. My cousin Jase came in and helped us a bit, and we eventually figured it out. It was really cool once we got the display to work. We used mirrors to make the laser bounce off creating a right angle triangle. Here are some images of what my display looked like!
Once the display got all set up, we went into the other scimatics room and turned off the lights. Mr. Gross sprayed smoke over the display and we could actually see the laser! It was hard to catch on photo, but heres what I got.
I can say that I was able to prove the law of reflection and the Pythagorean theorem with my group.
Here are my core competencies:
———————————————————————————————
#1) Questioning and predicting: Demonstrate a sustained intellectual curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest
I feel like I was able to spend all class time effectively and on task. I was able to pay attention in class and hand in all assigned work.
#2)Communicating and Representing: Represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial, and symbolic forms
I was able to submit a complete lab study with all of the steps of completion. I understand the law of reflection and the Pythagorean Theorem.
#3)Applying and innovating: Co-operatively design projects
My group and I were able to successfully build a laser display that proves the law of reflection and the Pythagorean theorem. Each group member worked together to complete the project and make a final product.
———————————————————————————————
Thanks for reading my blog!