Monday, 3 February 2014
While I was home for 3 epic snow days last week, Frank was kind enough to write my lesson plan for me. We played Flappy Bird while it snowed so that when we came back to school, we could learn to analyze it using Logger Pro. My kids had one lab BS (Before the Snow) that used Logger Pro, so we at least had some foundation to build on. It took us under 30 minutes from inserting the movie to having a value for acceleration due to gravity (numbers ranged from 8.5 to 12 m/s/s).
Only after I taught both of my classes today did I watch this vid which gave me a better approach to the problem:
I love the way this guy said, “what size must the bird be so that gravity is Earth-like?” The resulting exploration leads you to a bird that’s approximately bird-sized, so kids can reasonably deduce the game has lifelike physics.
I have to say the timing was impeccable. I don’t have a single student who’d never heard of the game PLUS I needed to introduce accelerated vertical motion. We ignored the projectile aspect for now.
Something cool also came up today: also, while wandering the English and History building on campus, I came across a bulletin board on why students need feminism. These four answers were my favorites:
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