2-7-09

Mr. Manning's first period class went as normal on Friday morning. The class started with a daily question. The question gave two situations. The first situation was shooting a cannonball out of a normal cannon. The second situation was shooting a cannonball out of a much longer cannon. The question was how would it effect the cannonball? Would it change the distance, force or both? The answer is it would change both. After the daily question we watched a youtube video about how to read a caliper. This was important because we were using a vernier caliper to measure in the lab. Beware this video is not very exciting. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz40xmrdhyY ) Everyone then separated into different groups for the lab. The lab consisted of a simular situation to the daily question. Each group had a small tube and a long tube, a driver,a caculator, a nail, and a block of wood. First every group had to measure the length of their nail with a caliper. Then the idea was to hit the nail softly into the block of wood until it was able to stand on its own. Then each group centered the tube around the nail and held the driver above it. The driver had a hole in the bottom of it. When the driver was dropped it landed straight on top of the nail. If you have to redo this lab remember to not bend the nail with your driver! Then group members had to measure the length of the nail sticking out of the wood with the caliper and subtract that from their original measurement to get the displacement. By caculating this the group was able to find out the force. Then it was repeated two more times with the longer tube and then the "longest tube" which consisted of putting the two tubes together. Most groups did not get to finish and will finish up Monday.

By Frances Bruey