| $ Store Activity Name: | Boom Rackets! |
| Concepts / Skills addressed: | ratios, graphing, designing hypotheses and experiments |
| Approximate Grade Range: | 4th - 8th |
| Materials: | rackets, ball |
| The General Idea: | Students use the rackets to hit the ball (or shuttle cock, ping pong ball or what have you) back and forth. They keep track of how many successful hits they get - that is, how many times can they hit it back and forth without dropping it? They get ten trials (?) They then use the numbers they record to examine the hypothesis that they will get better at this with practice. They can graph the results in a scatter plot , looking for a trend, analyze the slope of the graph, use that to make predictions for their performance after 20 trials, etc. |
| Extensions: |
Complete five (three?) trials
with a distance of 2 meters seperating
the students. The do five more trials at 4 meters, etc. analyzing
the
way in which success is affected by distance. Make predictions
for
longer distances. Let students work as individuals, bouncing the ball over and over until they drop it. They keep track of how many they can do without mishap, keep track of the numbers and look for a trend. Are they getting better? What is the effect of practice. How many practices would it take to get to the point where they are likely to be able to do 100 successfully? Is there an association between this abilty and a student's self-assessment of atheleticism? |
| Links: |
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| Author: |
Mark Roddy |