Photo Credit: Tim Hamilton via Compfight
Check out the Solve it Your Way website. The first two links have been uploaded, one from Ohio and one from Arizona. Check out how they answered this question.
Are you inspired to try? If so, give it a whirl and report back to me. I’ll post your results on line through this blog and we can link to that on Franki’s website.
Here’s a format for putting the information together. I can help with this. Just let me know.
Part 1: Materials Used
List the materials you used — including balls and ramp (if you used one…). Photos are great to go along with the list.
Part 2: Hypothesis (that’s a scientific prediction with a reason.)
Tell what you think is going to happen and why. It can be something like this: I think the soccer ball will roll farthest because it is the heaviest.
Part 3: Procedure
Tell what you did in the order your did it. First I …; Next I …; etc. Photos or video of you doing that are really great to have.
Part 4: Results
Tell what you found out. Example: The boce ball rolled the farthest (2.3 meters). The soccer ball rolled 1.9 meters…
Make a table that shows the ball and the distance traveled.
Part 5: Discussion
Talk about why you might have gotten the results you did. You might even tell what experiment this made you want to do to find out more about rolling balls. Here’s a real example from when I talked with Emmit about this yesterday from his experiment: I was surprised that the foam ball rolled the farthest because it wasn’t very heavy. I think the wind pushed it along. If I did the experiment again, I’d try it on a day that wasn’t windy to see if the results were different.