Meaghan's Blog

1. the topic i wanted to learn about was basketball. my question was does some brand of girls basketballs bounce better than others? this was my question i wanted to find out. i chose basketball because i love this sport and it is my favorite. the brands of basketballs that i used was Rawlings, Sterling, and Baden.

2. The physics that i have learned behind my experiment is that basketballs bounce because the pressurized air inside of them. Because when you bounce a basketball, the 1^st thing that affects it is gravity. The gravity actually pulls the ball straight down to the ground. It is also determined by the elasticity of the ball, because a more elastic ball has more bounciness. When the ball bounces and hits the ground, the ball exerts force on it. The ground exerts force on the ball as well too. Than the motion of the ball would be stopped by the floor resulting in compression between the two, but on the other hand some of the kinetic energy is lost as thermal energy during the impact due to either the internal friction of the ball or the heating of the surface. When the ball bounces back upward the kinetic energy is converted to gravitational potential energy as the ball moves up.

3. What i have learned about designing and doing my experiement is that the more the ball is used the less friction it has on the ball. And the more new the ball is the more friction it has on it because it is not broken in all the way. i learned the more the ball is used the basketball will have a higher bounce height and faster velocity.

4. The best part of my project was that i learned something new about basketball. Also i had fun doing the actual experiment because i got to drop the basketballs and record it on camera. the worst part of doing my experiment was finding the velocity and bounce height on the  logger pro 3.8 on the computer. using the logger pro was hard because it was my first time using it and i had some problems. but i got it done and also learned how to use it very well in the end, and that is something else that i have learned by doing my experiment.

basketballs

1. Mine and Justins design process had to really to do about making x’s. we made squares and every square we made we put an x in it, we thought that it would be a stronger bridge if it had some type of something holding it together everywhere.  But our top part was pretty much triangles slanted at an angle.

justin and me

2. Ours succeeded but it did not hold the most weight. ours weighed 94 g, and it held 28.5 lbs. Our bridge passed all the rules in order to be part of the compettition but it broke with buckling. I think it only held that much becasuse we could have took more time and made sure all the measurments were accurate and even. I thought our bridge was pretty sturdy but it had too much compression so it broke in the middle.

our bridge

3. Comparing our bridge to Sandra and aldairs, they had triangles as their main shape for their bridge. but i think theres did better than me and justins. they had a good sturdy base and there top held it together even better. theres held 76 lbs and thats really good. Our bridge had a lot of tiny small pieces for the base and for their’s they were bigger and evenly cut well.

breaking time!!!

4. i think our bridge could have been improved if we used a different base than tiny little pieces of balsa wood and if we used triangles as the main shape to put it together than x’s. But i really thought ours would do really good because we thought making x’s in the middle of the sqaures for our base would make it more strong and sturdy because in every corner there would be support. we also could have took more time in gluing and cutting out the balsa wood for our bridge.

I really dont know what i want to learn about T.Rice!!!!! Maybe how to build a rocket and what does it take for it to take off like it does, and i want to learn this because i think it would be a cool fun assignment. maybe. ummm i want to learn about the bridges and how much weight it can handle. Ohh i just looked up some stuff on the internet and i want to learn about the space! and the moon, stars and the other planets. (astronomy)

Rocket!!!!

astronomy!!!!

1. Our design was to create a model that would firmly keep our egg safe and not from breaking. The kind of construction process we used was first was a sqaure out base that we can than put the egg in the middle of that and make sure it was tied around to the sides of the square model so it can hold it in place. We than built a propellar for the top so it could slow the acceleration as its falling and have the ablility of low mass.

2. Why our model succeeded was because we had such a firm base and our egg was secure enough and had some good cushion from all the straws that was wrapped around it. As it was falling our propellar was kind of working towards the end. I also think the wind had some good in why our egg survived, because as it was falling the force from the wind could’ve slowed our acceleration on our egg drop model.

3. Im comparing our egg drop model to Esteban’s and Andrews model. Our model was a pretty medium-big size so i thought, but Andrew’s and their’s was a good size too. On our device we had a pretty sturdy base that when Mr. Rice dropped it, It didnt break at all when it hit the ground. It stayed together and so did our egg base. Andrew’s and Stevie’s device worked pretty well too because their model had a lot of rubbies and rubber bands connected together all around that when theirs’ hit the ground it bounced up once and didnt break either. They also had a parachute, when we had a propellar. But I think their parachute worked better than ours. It did slow down the acceleration and force before it hit the ground and it was succesul as well.

4. How could our model improved is maybe we could’ve used a parachute too like Andrew’s and Estabans device instead of propellars! because they were the only ones that used a aluminum parachute with fishing line and it did help with all the gravity as it was falling. I think if we also used a parachute it could’ve slowed down our speed of acceleration too, and maybe it could’ve been more successful than it already was. But than i think about what if we really didnt need the propellars because our base was so stiff and hot-glued together.

Egg Drop Model by mj

Welcome to your brand new blog at Edublogs.

To get started, simply log in, edit or delete this post and check out all the other options available to you.

Also, please consider becoming an Edublogs Supporter – you can remove ads from yours and other blogs, upload up to 5GB or audio, video and every other sort of content and access great features under your ‘Plugins’ menu.

Supporters are what keeps Edublogs running and providing free blogs for education, so give it a go today

For assistance, visit our comprehensive support site, check out our getting started with Edublogs guide or stop by The Edublogs Forums to chat with other edubloggers.

You can also subscribe to our brilliant free publication, The Edublogger, which is jammed with helpful tips, ideas and more.

And finally, if you like Edublogs but want to be able to simply create, administer, control and manage hundreds of student and teacher blogs at your school or college, check out Edublogs Campus… it’s like Edublogs in a box, all for you.

Thanks again for signing up with Edublogs!