Hello and welcome or welcome back to my blog!

Today I am going to be talking about our most recent Scimatics project: Laser Laws!

For this project, we were asked to build a laser display that had a right triangle in it. We learned about how light works, different types of light, how to use the Pythagorean theorem and so much more. 

Like other scimatics projects, at the start we had to make a mind map. This had all of our questions that we had about light, lasers and the Pythagorean theorem. At the end of the project, we went back an answered some of the questions to our best ability. Some still remain unanswered, but thats ok.

 

MILESTONE 4
This was a very challenging milestone for me. I didn’t understand what I was supposed to do, so I just left it. I did not complete it on time, and basically just let it sit unfinished over winter break. Eventually I finished, it, but I finished it really late. In this milestone, we were asked to build a laser triangle, and measure out the angles. The goal of this milestone was to see if the Pythagorean theorem worked on all triangles, not just right angle triangles. We had to make a step by step guide on how to make the laser triangles, as well as include the calculations that we did on the Pythagorean theorem,

-CORE COMPETENCIES –

Questioning and predicting: Demonstrate a sustained intellectual curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest. All class time is used efficiently for learning and project work without distractions. For this competency, I think that I was in between accomplished and developing. I think that I could have been better at my time management skills. There were some classes where I was just really distracted, and didn’t get any work done when I could have gotten a lot done. This is also one of the reasons that I didn’t turn in some things on time, because I was distracted in class and didn’t do any work when I should have. 

Communicating and Representing: Represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial, and symbolic forms. A scientific experimental procedure is developed and implemented with all required steps of the scientific method. A conclusion about the law of reflection and the pythagorean theorem is formulated and supported by precise measurements. For this competency, I think that I was also in between accomplished and developing. I think that I could have done a better job on my milestone 4. If I had managed my time better, I could have gotten it done on time, and I could have made it more detailed. I think that I also could have done a better job of showing the measurements and angles. I also think that for the final laser display, we should have shown more detail, and included the angles of the ray of light. 

Applying and innovating: Co-operatively design projects. The laser triangle is accurately planned, built, labeled and measured. All group members contribute equally. For this competency, I think that I was accomplished. Our laser triangle was pretty accurate, but it was a little off. We also didn’t include the angles on the physical laser display, or the report. I think that my group could have done a better job of working together. Some days one or two people would be working on the display, and others would be playing games. I personally worked more on building the laser display and the box more than the calculations, as I feel that I work better on the artsy stuff.

Here are some photos of our laser display in the light!

That’s all for now

Thanks for reading!

-Keira:)