Thursday, March 18, 2010

Mega Marble Rolls!

Over the last five weeks, my class conducted several experiments** with household cardboard tubes, marbles of various masses, and wooden blocks, to see what might produce the desired effects in their culminating project, the "Mega Marble Roll." Today they put their ideas to the test. Each team selected a problem, then designed and built a marble roll to solve it. They would like to share what they learned with you. (And would love it if you would leave them an encouraging comment or two! YOU are their audience!)

**Lessons are taken from "Measurement with Marbles" by the Math Learning Center.

Group #1 Problem: include two uphill and two downhill ramps




Group #2 Problem: include two jumps in your marble course



Groups pose with their finished products:





And a quick demonstration on averaging for the families...



Thank you for visiting our class. Please come again soon! (And the class thanks you for your comments!)

3 comments:

  1. Thank you for sharing your Mega Marble Rollers with us in Pennsylvania. Your work is impressive and your explanations sound very professional. Good work!

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  2. Hi, we enjoyed reading about your marble activities, and loved your videos! The trap-door was brilliant in the second vid.
    We have 2 questions: in the 1st video you said 'somehow it jumps over the hole'...how does it do that?!
    and the second question: did the averaging have anything to do with the marbles?
    Because of your posts, we are going to make some marble ramps and have a competition as an activity at our home-ed group on Wednesday. We will send a picture or two after the events!
    Take care,
    the Zaldua family
    located in Berkshire, UK

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks to both of you for your comments!

    To the Zaldua family...

    I'm going to get someone from the class to answer both of your questions. But in general, the answer to the second question is yes...averaging is part of the lessons in the context of the experiments leading up to the Mega Marble Roll finale. But I'll have a student explain how. ;)

    We can't wait to see your photos! How fun! And how fun to see a post from PA and the UK!

    We'll get back to you soon...

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for leaving me a message. I love comments almost as much as I love chocolate! And I do LOVE chocolate. :)

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