Crayton Middle School Inquiry Projects
Fall 2003 - Spring 2004

We began our project in the fall by introducing students to the life and works of Galileo, using several printed resources provided by the Teacher Quality Collaborative at the University of South Carolina. Students became familiar with Galileo’s experiments dealing with gravity and were eager to perform some experiments themselves.

One beautiful fall day our Physics consultant, USC graduate student Rob Heaton, came to Crayton, and we went outside with our notebooks, stopwatches, and balls of different sizes, shapes, and materials, to perform an experiment called, “How High Can You Throw?” This activity can be found in materials by the AIMS Education Foundation. Students took turns throwing balls in the air as high as they could. Each student was paired with a partner holding a stopwatch, and the time was noted and recorded. Upon returning to the classroom, students set up a table with two columns: total air time and height reached. Mr. Heaton guided students in finding a connection between the two numbers and in creating a formula from this connection.

This activity was followed up a few weeks later by the indoor Gravity Drop Experiment (see lesson plan), in which students used sophisticated photo-timing equipment provided by TQC. Mr. Heaton taught students to use the CPO (Cambridge Physics Outlet) photogate timer. Two photo clamps were attached to a physics stand and to the timer on the other end. Students took turns dropping a marble between the two clamps, recording the time between the two, and calculating the speed and acceleration of the marble. After each marble drop, the clamps were moved farther apart. Students recorded the results on a chart and later graphed the results to try to find a connection between time and speed. During the process students worked with various small groups or partners, then did a lab write-up on the process.

By this time in the year Algebra students have enough background knowledge to work with more sophisticated concepts and formulas, so we plan to continue our study of gravity this spring with some materials provided by TQC about baseball and gravity.

Materials:
• Physics stand
• Marble
• Timing clamps
• Graph paper
• Ruler

Hypothesis:
The marble at the second clamp would move faster than the marble at the first clamp.

Procedure:
• Set marble into the starting box
• Set clamp at .05 m farther each time
• Record results
• Repeat 8 times
• Graph

Conclusion:
The hypothesis was correct, because the speed at the second clamp was faster than the speed at the first clamp.