By: Elisa Kensinger, Science Instructor at DHS
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, I applied for and won a $5000 grant from Continental Resources to purchase some new lab equipment. Due to the pandemic, the delivery of my new lab equipment was delayed until the second semester of 2022. Now that the equipment is here, students in my class have been able to participate in several labs.
One of the labs is all about Newton's 2nd Law, which examines the relationship between force, mass, and acceleration. We are able to use the Smart Carts from the Continental Resources grant to get live data from the carts themselves. The carts connect through Bluetooth to the student Chromebooks using a program called SparkVUE. We can change the amount of force on the carts by changing the mass they carry or the amount of force that's pulling them. Students investigated which made a more significant impact, changing the mass in the carts or the amount of force pulling the cart.
We are also using the Smart Carts in our momentum and collision unit. We introduced the Law of Conservation of Momentum by colliding the 2 carts head-on atop the elevated track. Each cart's motion is graphed using the SparkVUE software. We can collect live data for position, acceleration, and speed and compare the results for both carts through various motion graphs.
I'm really looking forward to the Level 4 real-world application opportunity that the Smart Carts that Continental Resources helped me purchase for the momentum and collisions unit. Students will be able to design, test, and refine a device that decreases the force on an object during a collision. Students will create their own versions of car bumpers, airbags, or the big yellow trash can barricades near bridge supports on the highway. The Smart Carts allow students to test their designs' efficiency in minimizing forces experienced during a car crash. The live-time quantitative evidence from the Smart Carts and the ability to efficiently perform multiple trials help the engineering design process for students. They will have excellent evidence to streamline their prototypes and hopefully develop effective designs to reduce the force experienced during a crash.
The Smart Carts are a real Physics lab workhorse. They work with all of Newton's Laws of motion, the Impulse-Momentum Theory, and the Conservation of Energy. I can use the Smart Carts and SparkVUE software for learning and assessing 5 different North Dakota state physical science standards. (Physics typically has 12 standards each school year that are assessed, so we use the Smart Carts for almost the whole first semester!) The Continental Resources grant has allowed my Physics students to see actual, accurate data through a variety of experiments and to use that data to come to their own conclusions and hypotheses.