The final scimatics project for this quarter was called “laser laws” and revolved around the law of reflection and the Pythagorean theorem. Our driving question of this project was “How can we test the law of reflection and the Pythagorean theorem” we proved this by doing some pretty cool assignments such as: Using the online ray optics simulator to prove the law of reflection, the group experiment project where we created a lab report and the final assignment where we made a cool design with reflecting mirrors and then used a laser to reflect off of each mirror creating a really cool looking project.
This type of project was new to me, I don’t think I have ever learned about something like this before. Learning about how lasers work was very important to know and getting to actually use them was fun. Learning about reflection was another important part in this project and being able to prove the law of reflection by using online and in real life experiments with reflecting mirrors. It is actually pretty important to know how to do this sort of stuff because now I know how lasers work and now I know how they are used and what they can do. The lab reports we did are good practice for the future because when you go to school it will help you understand how certain things work.
In this project we were graded on three topics such as:
Demonstrate a sustained intellectual curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest: I accomplished this by using my time to create a well written scientific lab report.
Represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial, and symbolic forms: I accomplished this by properly calculating the Pythagorean theorem and properly measuring the shape.
Co-operatively design projects: I accomplished this by helping and contributing to the group by helping them measure, set up the project and calculate what needed to be calculated.
I feel like I did very well in this project and understood most of the scientific topics and the mathematical topics. I feel like this project was very important for my learning and important to know for when I continue on in science and math. In conclusion I had a lot of fun making this project with my group members.
