Week 11 Reflection

This assessment we are beginning is much quicker than the previous ones, which is a bit of a relief as both the research paper and the balloon powered car took some time to complete. While both of those two could be done quicker next year, they will still be somewhat time consuming. This assessment, on the other hand, will be completed by the end of next week.

The first two parts of this assessment can be a slight challenge because they use real world data, depending on what asteroids the students pick the trends may be more or less obvious. I have some notes in italics to suggest ways to make the data easier for the student to work with. That being said, I didn't do this with my students, but just explained that the real world is sometimes not as clear as the data we might pick for them in class, most understood the trend even if it was less obvious in their graphs.

We started the week looking at an image of the moon's surface, covered in impact scars. The students discussed this picture and the assumptions they could make from it and generally figured out that larger impacts meant more energy or more mass, so I knew that they data they would collect would only help support their previous understanding of the topic.

Part 1 - (It is easier for the students to graph and see trends if you somewhat restrict the values for mass for the first data table so there is less range, this could be as simple as requiring them to only pick asteroids with a mass to the power of value of e6-e7. The other data table already restricts the mass values.) 

This part was easily done in a class period for most students. We discussed the notation briefly as the "e" for scientific is not familiar to them (though most already knew scientific notation from previous years). We also discussed as well as why there is the restriction to mass in the second graph (because it would overwhelm the difference in velocity). I gave the students a couple asteroids to look at that would work for the second part to get them started and then let them work. As it is not the most thrilling assignment, if student motivation is an issue, I could see giving them 10 asteroids they could use and then letting them find those asteroids and enter in that data. It still has them working with real data, but may be less tedious. 

Below are some asteroids that can be used with values in the mass range for the second graph.

2016 UR36

2016 TM

2016 RD34

2016 VZ17

2016 WU

2016 TQ54

2009 JF1

2009 SD15

2016 TC57

2014 HM198

2012 UL171

2012 CQ46

Note: The velocity is actually an exponential relationship, but the values are close enough that a linear graph works fine as well to show the relationship.

Part 2 - The first graph was also completed in a class period for most students. We began by discussing two things, graphing with scientific notation and how to spread out the numbers of a graph evenly. For both of these I began a partial graph for the Mass and Energy data to show how it should be set up and would look like. Even with the example I had more student questions than I normally do. That being said, once the students understood how to start with the graph, most were able to do it on their own. I also generally let my students work in groups to collaborate, this meant that a lot of questions were able to be answered or explained by peers who understood the approach to graphing more easily.

Some students moved onto the second graph during the class period, but most needed more time.

For a more detailed explanation, and I am sure there are other ways to approach the graph, I had my students start by eliminating up to 3 numbers if there were any that were much larger (by powers of ten) then the others. This helps make it so fewer numbers are clustered at the origin of the graph.

Then we converted the numbers to all be to the same power of 10 as the largest number. Say the largest number was 2.3e7 and my other numbers were 3.4e6 and 2.0e5, the first would become 0.34e7 and the second would become 0.02e7. I felt that leaving them in scientific notation was easier than graphing the numbers in standard notation as the number would be huge in the point in the assignment is not the scale, but rather the relationship. 

Then the students found the difference between their largest and smallest number for each axis, divided that number by the number of boxes and used that to label the axis itself. 

And then we graphed the points. I discussed outliers briefly, mostly because one of the top asteroids in the chart at that time (which a lot of students picked) had a very small velocity, so the number skews their trendline a bit.

During the rest of the week I had my students explore an article on Actively Learn about how we can take sample from craters to better understand how the energy involved causes rock movement. Looking at their answers showed me that the idea of Conservation of Energy was not familiar to many of them, so we addressed that in the Pear Deck notes we did on Friday.