My tool addresses how mass affects the force exerted on it by gravity, which is found in Unit 2: Newton’s First and Second Laws.
My tool for this assignment is a video I made of myself performing an experiment. The video shows how an objects mass affects the force exerted on it by gravity. I demonstrated it by dropping cans of different masses into a bowl of flour. The can with more mass displaces more flour, and this is because it hit the flour with more force.
So, like I said, the tool is a video. I shot this video using a digital camera. I thought I was going to have to add sound later, but I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that my camera actually records sound. I uploaded the video onto youtube, and linked it to my html file from there.
As far as the information I present in my video, I got that from the Cartoon Guide to Physics. That handy piece of literature taught me that the force of a falling object is F= m*g.
As far as the experiment I used, I made that up. I’m not claiming to be the first person to ever use it; I’m just saying that it was my own idea to use it. To be fair though, I did get the idea from this ball drop activity I did in my astronomy class last semester. That was used to show the effects of asteroids though.
The video I made could be used in a variety of ways. It would be kind of dumb to use it in my own classroom because I would be there and could just as easily do the experiment in real life, unless the experiment was really messy or dangerous and I didn’t want to do it in the classroom (this experiment does not fall under that category though). I think the best way to make use of this tool would be for students who are not in the classroom. It could be used as reinforcement for students that might be doing homework after a hard day of learning and forget some key point. If they were stuck in a situation like this, they could just jump online and watch the video of the experiment. Seeing the experiment could allow them to figure out whatever it is that was stumping them. Even more than that though, if the student didn’t understand what happened, or just needed to see the experiment again, it would be available.
Also if a student was sick the day that the class did the experiment he or she would be able to watch it at home. This tool is really useful in keeping students caught up.
This tool could be used for any topic lesson, and I personally think it’s a good idea to make videos of experiments like this. In this specific case though, it would be used in a unit about Newton’s Laws, and the relationship between mass, acceleration and force in particular. Since this tool’s main purpose is reinforcement it would be used primarily after the lesson over the material in the video has been covered in class. Depending on the depth one explores the topic discussed in the video there might be no need for any prior knowledge at all. As far as the way I used the tool to address the objective, I feel that the student doesn’t need any prior information or learning. I feel like they can learn about mass affecting the force exerted by gravity by watching it. Like I said above though, if it is just a reminder or a clip of the experiment, the student will have needed to of learned the material in class or read about it in a textbook. On the whole though, students can check the video and learn from it if and when they need to.
The step-by-step procedure for using this tool is as follows:
I think that that is pretty much it.
I don’t think there are any issues associated with this tool. You might tell the students to get a parents permission before getting on the Internet, but other than that there is nothing problematic as far as I can see.
I think that the tool does address all aspects of the objective. Everything about the question is explored and discussed in the video. In the video I explain why if an object has more mass it will have more force exerted on it by gravity. I then did an experiment that displays the relationship between mass, gravity and force. I feel like the video covered everything pretty completely.
I think that this tool is one of the most effective ways to show a student something. It is pretty much like a class, except you can rewind it. I think that if the student watches the video it will benefit their understanding of the objective. I don’t know that they will have a complete and total understanding because they might not understand the way I presented something. They could still have questions after watching the video. But I think that if the student watches the video, and combines it with information learned in class, and supplemental material (like textbooks or class notes) they will absolutely master the objective.
I think that students of different abilities and interests will all probably benefit from the use of this tool. I think that it is accessible and understandable to nearly everyone. I don’t know who would have an emotional or cognitive problem using this video. Maybe children that don’t have the Internet at their house wouldn’t be able to use it because they don’t have it readily available. I cannot think of a solution for those children either, except for maybe the public library. For children like that I might be able to burn the videos onto a DVD-ROM or something. It’s definitely not an unfixable problem.
The misconceptions that the student could potentially hold about the objective would be that mass has no affect on the force gravity exerts on an object. I explain that mass does have an effect in the video, but if that does not reach the student I feel that seeing the experiment will probably displace those misconceptions because it shows that mass clearly does have an affect. They might also not be aware that gravity is the accelerant for a falling object, or that it is constant. I briefly explain that in the video, but I think that if a student had trouble understanding that the situation would require more than watching my video.
This tool was relatively cost free. Monetarily, it cost me virtually nothing. The flour and cans were things I already had, and I wouldn’t count them as costs because I didn’t purchase them specifically for using them as learning tools. The same thing goes for my camera.
As far as time goes, it took about 20 minutes to shoot the video (including time to set up the experiment). It took a little over an hour to upload it to youtube. Outside of that I didn’t spend very much time on it at all. I would say that compared to the benefits the students will receive from this video, the costs are miniscule.
Gonick, Larry. Cartoon guide to physics. New York: HarperPerennial, 1991.