Part 1: Read and follow instructions for the experimental portion of this activity. Document all of your trials in your Engineering Notebook (or Journal) with illustrations and/or a table to log various positions of fulcrum. Be organized in your approach so that you can easily discover patterns as they are occurring (do not just move fulcrum arbitrarily ...having a strategy of chronological incremental movements is best).
Record all of your thoughts and difficulties as you go along for later reflection.
Part 2: After the class discussion/presentation then consider the relationships discussed...use the experimental information combined with our recent class discussion to attempt to complete the linked worksheet activity.
This exploration and documentation should include the following:
Collaboration and brainstorming
Planning, documenting and predicting outcomes
Testing ideas and documenting process and results
Reflecting and improving ideas, understandings or designs
Self directed experimentation
Calculate leverage components
Calculate mechanical advantage
Explain importance of levers
Explain mechanical advantage
...Then Brainstorm Together in Class Webpage Discussion Post
Bonus Presentation Opportunity:
Your group presentation artifact shall be a PowerPoint presentation of no less that 5 slides and no more than 15. Your presentation should address all factors considered and how looking at the other groups work may have affected your final analysis.
All PowerPoint presentations should be of professional and conservative business or scientific format. These shall then be posted on an ongoing web based class project site and each persons personal web portfolio for display on the internet. All pages and portfolios shall conform to internet safety standards and acceptable language and content policies.
A formal peer review shall be done as a discussion post on the class webpage and shall be completed appropriate to said venue with regard to commentary, language and content. This review/reflection is to be a graded activity of self and peer assessment skills.