Hi everyone,

In this blog post, I will be talking about my last project we did in Scimatics titled Laser Laws. This project was lots of fun, what we had to do was make a triangle with a laser using the Pythagorean Theorem and The law of reflection. The math part was the Pythagorean Theorem and the science side was the law of reflection.

In the first paragraph, I will talk about the project, then what the Pythagorean Theorem and the law of reflection are using the mind map we made, next I will talk about our curricular competency, and finally, show some pictures and what I learned and answer the driving question.

First What is the Pythagorean Theorem? What you need to remember is A square + B square = C square. Meaning the sides of a triangle. If you had a triangle of a 90º angle that had the sides of 3cm, 4cm, and 5cm. You would square 3 and 4 then ad both of those sides up after you square it than square 5 and 9+16=25 you should get that equation after you square everything. That is the Pythagorean Equation. What is the law of reflection? The law of reflection took me a bit longer to understand but once you get it, it is super easy. There are two main concepts you need to know the reflected ray and the Incidence Ray. The Reflected Ray is the ray that bounces off of the Incidence Ray. The incidence ray is the ray that is used to make the reflected ray. You can tell what the incidence ray is by seeing what ray is closer to the laser. The reflected ray from the last mirror bounce will turn into the incidence ray for the next mirror bounce. Here is a mind map that I made at the start of the year I had some questions and then I answered them at the end of the year. I also added to go into the depth of the Pythagorean Theorem and the law of reflection.

For the three Curricular Competencies. We had three Curricular Competencies the first was Questioning and Predicting, the second was Communicating and Representing, and finally Applying and Innovating. I will say what I got and describe each Curricular Competency.

Questioning and predicting: Demonstrate a sustained intellectual curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest. For this one, it was about using all class time efficiently without distractions from learning. I got accomplished and a bit developing.

Communicating and Representing: Represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial, and symbolic forms. For this section, it is about building knowledge so were still doing worksheets to learn about the project the Pythagorean theorem and the law of reflection. For this, I got mostly accomplished and the rest developing.

Applying and innovating: Communicating and Representing: Represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial, and symbolic forms. For this section, we are building our triangle with the lasers and about everyone contributing equally. For this, I got mostly accomplished and the rest developing. I think I should have got a higher grade because I did about 75% of the work and it is not like a was boss hogging everything it’s just that my group mates did not know ex how to do any of it.

In total, I got accomplished. Here is a picture of my grade.

Here are some pictures of our end project. And my ray optics simulator milestone.

For the ray optics simulator we had to make a triangle using a website with lasers, and mirrors.

The driving question was how can we test the Pythagorean theorem and the law of reflection? Well to answer this question it is simple we used it in the ray optics simulator and our final milestone: making the triangle. What I learned for the project was just about the Pythagorean Equation and the law of reflection. I also learned how to make the triangle using lasers by setting up the lasers and like cable routing. I also learned how to use the ray optics simulator app.

Thankyou for reding my blog post.