Photo Credit: r.e. Kittson via Compfight
We’ve noticed that some pencils don’t work really well. The cheaper Dixon pencils break very easily and take a long time to sharpen. The Megabrands and Dixon Ticonderoga pencils sharpen nicely and hardly ever break, but they are more expensive.
Today, Trysten wondered if we could create an experiment to see if we could figure out if the Dixon pencils were really cheaper than the other brands. He mentioned that if the cheaper pencils broke more easily, and broke during the sharpening process (which they really do!), then maybe the more expensive pencils were actually cheaper in the long run because they last longer.
So, here’s Trysten’s question kids:
Which pencil brand really is the cheapest?
Here’s my question:
How could we design an experiment to figure out the answer to Trysten’s question?
Post ideas below, kids. Let’s see if we can think about how to figure out the answer to this question. We’ll talk more about that in school, too, but I thought this might be an interesting way to get some thinking going at home, too. (Ya know, that ol’ un-homework.)
Write your idea for how to do an experiment (called the procedure) by putting the steps in 1, 2, 3, 4,…order.
AHA! I mentioned Trysten’s question to my wife, Beth, who is a scientist and she said, “It sounds like you could do a ‘mark and recapture’-type experiment.” Then she explained a bit what it would look like.
I didn’t have time to talk to the kids about this today; we’ll talk more tomorrow, but imagine those wildlife shows, dart guns, and ear tags. How could we use the ‘mark and recapture’ IDEA (no dart guns or ear tags!) to help us answer Trysten’s question? What might we need to do? What data would we need to gather?
I think the kids will like the idea when I present it to them. We’ll need to think about it together so we really understand it.
Great Question! I will use your answer to help me decide my pencil purchases next fall!