This week in STEM, the 3/4 class kept working on their boats. The goal of the boat design challenge was to see how potential energy is transformed into kinetic energy, and explore ways that we can measure both PE and KE. The students finished building their boats, and then went down to the McCabes Brook to test them out. Finally, we reviewed how to conduct controlled experiments and set up an experiment to see how the amount of potential energy affects the speed of their boat. The students measured the distance their boat traveled, and the time it took, for two different tests- one when the rubber band/cardboard paddle was wound up fewer times, and one when it was wound up more times (less and more PE!). They did a wonderful job thinking about how to best control their experiment, measuring the distance and time, and calculating how the speed of their boat changed with more potential energy! Next week we’ll officially kick off this project on energy and energy transformations.
