Week 2 - How do we make a race exciting between people who run at different speeds?

Lab: 

    Today, we continued our thinking about how we can support play that is exciting but not dangerous. We narrowed in on how we can make a race exciting between people who run at different speeds and started by watching a video of "The Freeze" racing fans but giving each of them a head start. Each race he caught up to his opponent and ended up beating them in every clip of the video. We used the video as an example for our big question and inquiry for the day. We were asked to use our model of a race to develop a method to ensure that a race is exciting between two racers. Our groups thinking was that we needed to calculate our distance per second so that when we were matched up against our opponent, we can calculate the distance head start that they would need for the race to be a close call. 

Our Data Table

    Based off of our calculations we multiplied them by the race length to figure out how long each racer would take to complete the race. Once we found this number, we subtracted them to get the difference with the difference being one of the runners still participating in the race. Based off the person with the longer time (slower pace), we took their meters per second time and divided the difference by that amount to calculate what distance head start the walker will need so that the race is exciting. 

The Race

    At the end of class we actually got to participate in the race and test our hypothesis. We calculated that our racer would need a .48 m head start for the race to be a close call, and it ended up turning out just the way that we hoped with both racers finishing at about the same time. 

Lecture: 

In lecture, we went over our findings from lab and discussed models were represented in our work and which weren't. We were able to look at the standard as well as the SEP, DCI, and CCC's and decided which were used in our lab section on Monday. I was really neat to look at this afterward and see how it aligned with the activity, and how we as students engaged in each.  

Textbook Reflection: 

What I learned: I learned more about describing and measuring motion of objects. I really liked that the article went into depth of what the position of the object means and how we can use that to interpret speed. I didn't really know the reasoning behind latitude and longitude and why/how that came to be. I didn't know that it tells you where something is relative to something else.

What was most helpful: The description of the difference between speed vs. velocity was the most helpful thing that I pulled from this article as they are two things that I frequently mix up in my brain. Speed is describing how fast something moves where as velocity describes how fast and in what direction something is moving. 

What I need more information on: In the reading, it describes both scalar quantities and vector quantities but I've never heard of these terms or used them before. While I understand the differences, I was hoping to get a few more examples of vector quantities that we use in physics.