Week 5 Blog Post

 

1. How can we design a safe and durable playground surface? When thinking of this big question, we decided to take a mixture of playground surfaces to add to our bowl. We used sand, rubber chips, straw, and added saran wrap on top of it. We then took a measuring tape and measured out one meter from the top of our bowl and marked it on the whiteboard. We dropped our egg from that mark, and successfully saved it from breaking when it hit our playground surface. We were confident in our surface that we made so we did not change anything for the second round. In the second round, we dropped it from two meters. Our egg did not bounce off of the surface like some other eggs did. But, it did crack from hitting the surface at two meters high. 

2. I learned that our design did not work from the two meter drop because the egg had more time to accelerate, making the force of the impact stronger than the one from the one meter drop. I learned that the surface and the egg were both affected during the impact because of Newton's Third Law, where objects exert forces on each other in equal, opposite directions. 

3. Pressbook connections

- From the pressbook from the week before, I had learned about potential energy and kinetic energy and how it works with a pendulum. This week, I was able to gain a higher understanding of potential and kinetic energy because it connected to the egg drop that we did in lab. I learned that the energy can transfer from the egg to the surface and then back to the egg as kinetic energy. If the surface does not bounce, then that kinetic energy remains in that surface and does not go back into the egg. 

- I found learning about both types of energy the most helpful because I was able to see how it works in this big question as well as the question from last week that we explored. 

- I would like more information on how potential and kinetic energy work in other situations. 

- Where does the egg have the most energy when it was falling? It is right before it hits the surface?