Hello, and welcome back to the final project of quarter 2 scimatics. This project was all about two main concepts, the Pythagorean Theorem, and the law of reflection. The project also aimed to teach us more about the scientific method and light in general.
The driving question for this project was “How can we test the Pythagorean theorem and the law of Reflection.” I think we can test both the Pythagorean theorem and the law of Reflection in many different ways. For example, we tested the law of reflection using a laser app, a light plus mirror, and a laser display. However, for any test, you need to be as accurate as possible and use the scientific method. This includes a question (so you know what your testing), hypothesis (a guess to test), the actual experiment, then a conclusion (the final thoughts and results).
Now to get us actually interested in the project, we were told that at the end, we would get to create a laser display.
However, to get to this point we had to do some learning.
Question and Predicting
In Scimatics, we normally start and end each project with a mind map. This lets us know how much we knew when we started, and how much more we learned during the project. I really liked this because I got to come back afterwards and check off the all questions I now knew. For example, “What is the Pythagorean theorem?”, and “How can you predict how light will reflect off mirrors?”. My first mind map also consisted of a lot of questions about light and its different properties. Unfortunately we didn’t get around to a lot of those questions (maybe next year). However I still learned a lot about stuff I didn’t ask about like the different types of mirrors, the different types of electromagnetic radiation, and the different tests that they used to figure this stuff out years ago.
Start Mind Map
Communicating and Representing
To learn more about the law of Reflection and the scientific method, we were told to complete our own test. This test had to prove that the law of reflection works. To do this our group took a thin beam of light and shone it at a flat mirror with a protractor underneath. This way we could measure both the angle of incidence and the angle of reflection. It ended up being quite hard to line up the light exactly to make sure it hit the centre of the mirror, but we got there in the end. (Click to see our attempt at this experiment👉 Law of Reflection Time Lapse). This was also one of the first tries at using the scientific method. Over the project, we slowly did more, and got better at doing these reports more accurately and scientifically.
Applying and innovation
As promised, for the final milestone we got to make a laser display. The rule was that the laser display had to have a right angled triangle in it. We were allowed five mirrors and two lasers to try and create the coolest looking shape we could out of a laser. Of course this was also a group project so we started putting our brains together to try to think of a shape we could do. Our first idea was to do a 3D shape instead of a 2D shape. Unfortunately we decided that a 3rd dimension made the angles too complicated and hard to set up in a short amount of time. After a bit more thinking we eventually came up with a diamond shape that used exactly five mirrors and 2 lasers.
To finally build the thing, we first drew the shape on the cardboard. Then using our new found knowledge of the law of reflection, we drew lines exactly where the mirrors had to be to create the shape. Then all we had to do was set up the mirrors and lasers, turn it on and hope for the best. Because we already knew exactly where the mirrors had to go, it was actually very easy to set up and required very little fiddling to get right.
Final Project Layout
This was a really interesting project. We got to do many different experiments to test both the law of Reflection and the Pythagorean theorem, and of course we got to play with lasers. Who doesn’t like that? Our diamond turned out looking and functioning great. Unfortunately we didn’t get the most smoke so the lasers are kind of hard to see in the pictures, but it still turned out great even if they aren’t that visible.
If you want to check out the other people who worked on this project you can check them out here 👇
See you next time! 👐