They were told to brainstorm ways they could do this and to research the Laws of Motion to see if these could help them when creating their mazes.
Newton's Laws of Motion:
1. Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.
2. The relationship between an object's mass m, its acceleration a, and the applied force F is F = ma. Acceleration and force are vectors (as indicated by their symbols being displayed in slant bold font); in this law the direction of the force vector is the same as the direction of the acceleration vector.
3. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
After investing what these laws meant and how they could apply them to their own mazes, I had students construct blue prints of the mazes so they would know what materials they would need to bring from home.
Next, the students constructed marble mazes out of plastic equipment so they could get the idea of what materials from home they may have similar to this, they really enjoyed this!
These were the winners from the first marble maze challenge with materials already supplied....we will see who wins the next challenge with materials brought in from home.
Today we started building with the items brought from home, the students had a lot of great ideas so I can't wait to see the final products. The final Marble Maze race will be on May 27th.
