Week 1 Blog Post

 I do not have any visuals or pictures for this week, as I investigated the big question by thinking since I was not in lab. 

1. How can we ensure that a race is exciting? How do we make a race exciting between people who run at different speeds? 

While thinking about this big question, I brainstormed a few ideas as to how we could make a race exciting if people run at different speeds. Some ideas I thought of were making the races team centered instead of individual racing, such as relay racing, playing fun racing games, and making it more challenging for those who run faster. After putting more thought into it, having each individual racer run a certain distance and timing it would help. For example, having one racer run one lap around the track and time it, then have the other racer run one lap around the track and time it. After getting the times, find the difference between the times and that difference can be the amount of time that the slower runner gets a head start for the race. 

2. For the lecture this week, I learned about the different NGSS factors that kids should know and do, such as planning and carrying out investigations, forces and motion, and patterns. I also learned about the calculating aspect of how much of a head start one should get based off of distance. My initial thought in the lab was figuring out how much of a head start based off of time. I learned that time equals distance over speed. I also learned how to describe the motion of certain moving objects, such as a car's motion. 

3. Pressbook findings 

- I learned a lot of information within this week's pressbook. I learned that describing motion has benefits such as being about to predict where something will be in the future and seeing if we understand what we are observing. I also learned that distance and direction can successfully describe the position of something. I learned about the differences between the metric system and the imperial system, and how using one or the other depends on what you are describing or measuring. I learned that speed is how fast something is moving versus velocity is how fast and in what direction something is moving. 

- The one thing that I found the most helpful in this pressbook was the amount of real-life examples there were throughout it. This allowed me to make relevant connections and truly understand the information that I was learning. 

- I need more information on how to calculate acceleration because the units were confusing me a little bit with m/s/s and mph/s. 

- I have no questions or concerns, but I really liked the few little videos that were within the pressbook. I found these helpful and engaging.