Lesson Plans

I had many requests for a step by step instruction of making the "Hydraulic Crane".

Although this wasn't my construction (one of my brilliant students did this one for a project that I assigned), I can figure out the basics from what I saw.

Note: The following is only meant as a start for anyone that wants to try this project. However, everyone has their own twist to every assignment, every design. Use your imagination to make the crane better, and your own!

Materials:

• 30 mL syringes (x8)
• dialysis tubing (or any other kind of plastic tubing for connecting the syringes together)
• wood (for crane construction and for base)
• anchors (to hold the tubing in place)
• bottle with water (or any other weight to counter balance the crane arm)
• a scoop (any kind of shovel)
• Screws / Nails / Nuts / Bolts
• + Other miscellaneous materials.

Procedure

A great activity I recently did with my son was a "life-line":

1. Take some letter sized printer paper and cut it in half (length wise). The child can do the cutting to practice their cutting skills with scissors.

2. Then tape the pieces together lengthwise to create a long strip of paper. We used a total of two pieces of paper (4 strips taped together) for my 5 year old son's life line, and three pieces of paper (6 strips taped together) for my life line (I'm a bit older than 5 so my life line had more going on than my son's).

3. Then, draw a long line down the centre of the long paper strip.

4. Label 0 at one end (to mark your child's birth) and your child's age on the other end (to mark how old he/she is now). Fill in the rest of the number line with all the years that are missing.

5. Then the fun part begins. You get to tell your child when they first talked, first walked. What major events happened in their lives, such as moving, going to preschool, learning to swim etc. For each event draw (or get your child to draw) a little picture to represent the event. My son also asked me to draw birthday cakes to represent each birthday (with the right amount of candles on each cake). He also asked me to remind him when he started to like dinosaurs, which colours he liked at what ages, etc.

We were playing Settlers of Catan the other day. If you don't know it, you should immediately go out and buy it, because it is a fantastic game... one of the best strategy / board games ever. But back to my topic... The game relies on die randomness. From basic math / probability, we know that when rolling two dice, the sum of 7 has the highest probability of getting rolled. Next, the sums of 6 and 8 would have the next best chance. More importantly, the 6 and the 8 would have equal chance of getting rolled. Then 5 and 9 and so on. This is easily shown with a table (sample space) displaying all the possible outcomes of rolling two dice and then counting the number of possible outcomes of getting a sum of 7, sum of 6, sum of 8 etc.

But when we were playing our board game, it seemed that these random rules didn't apply all that well. The higher numbers seemed to come up way more than the lower ones. For instance 9 came up way more than 5. First we thought that our dies are not well balanced, so we traded them from a set from Monopoly, but the same trend continued. Unhappy with this (I lost the game because I chose lower numbers in Settlers and they hardly came up) I decided to look into this more.

The Genetic Algorithm Game - Solving a Complex Pathway Problem with Evolution:

You start with a complex map (attached here as a pdf file, or see the picture above or create your own map). There is a way of getting from point A to area B in very many different combinations. Figuring out the fastest way to get there is the object of the game.

There are five sections (decisions) to the path. Starting at point A, once could go left (L), straight (S), or right (R). Each time you reach the next point (crossroads) you can choose to go left, straigt, or right. Since the path has five such points, the "genetic code" will consist of five such decisions.

For example, one student in the class can go first left, then right, then left, then straight, and finally straight to reach the final destination of B. For this student, the genetic code would be: LRLSS.

This lab is for investigating conservation of momentum. It is a simple lab with a couple toy cars crashing into each other. I used to do this lab with ticker tape, but now we have CBR2 devices to measure the speed of each car.

The specification are attached.

This lab is a very good lab for high school physics.

It makes students think of what needs to be measured in order to find the velocity of a marble sliding across a table and falling off. This is great for the Projectile Motion unit. Also it gives students an understanding of how to keep variables constant (in this case the speed of the marble is kept constant because of the ramp set at a constant angle at a constant distance from the edge of the table).

The lab requires very minimal tools / materials (a ramp, a marble, a ruler), but could be enhanced with a motion detector / graphing calculator CBR2 unit in order to see if the experiment correctly predicts the initial velocity. This way the students can also find the %error of their experiment. Also this lets them get into the technology, and review motion diagrams.

Great lab. Attached is the specification sheet.

This assignment is a cumulative assignment for the geometry unit in grade 9. It has a lot of proofs, some geometrical constructions and other trigonometry questions.

This lab is designed to investigate the motion of a pendulum, specifically its period. From some initial observations, the students are to collect reasonable data to determine the acceleration due to gravity.

Note: You will need a pendulum setup: a light string connected to a heavy weight on one side and a stationary object high above the floor on the other (like the ceiling), letting the pendulum swing back and forth. The string length should be adjustable.

This lab is designed for finding the static coefficient of friction. Students need to find a way to find the coefficient of friction using simples equipment such as spring scale (newton meter) and a box and some weights.

Attached is a specification sheet for this lab.

This lab is great for analysis of motion graphs (d vs. t, v vs. t, a vs. t) and how to change them one into another in a detailed manner. At the end, the students should find the acceleration due to gravity from the slope of the best fit line of the graph of v vs. t.

This lab, can give really great results (within 5% error) if the students do the right calculations.

Attached is the specifications for this lab.