Speed and Velocity Lab Jag Style

I found this speed and velocity lab on the internet from the Dade County physical science manual. The manual had a catchy name H.O.T. (higher order thinking). I was all in.

I challenged my students to do the lab. First we organized into groups. This has become a big hit in my class. I put the day's categories on Canvas, our online platform, for lessons and have them read them. They then try to organized themselves quicker than my other five classes. For the speed and velocity lab they had to have one person wearing black, one wearing red, one with sandals and one with none of those three. The winning class organized in thirty-five seconds.

Essentially the students were to decide on a walk to move from one measured point to another. Each person in the group was to move a different way (my adaptation). The creativity was impressive. Some walked upstairs forward, others backward. Some skipped, others hopped. Some crawled, another rolled. One walked on her hands.

One girl even did floor swimming. Another did somersaults.

Another backflips.

The most creative perhaps was the frog walk.

In short, they were to try to move at the same speed for two trials across their measured distance in order to "measure" an unknown distance. They did this by walking at that constant speed and recording the time. Multiplying their speed by their time gave them the unknown distance. One young man was only 10 centimeters off from the 12 meter distance!


It was good to see them involved and making charts and recording data and collaborating about what to do with it.

Out of 34 groups one group got completely out of the box - they decided to do a virtual motion across the globe using four different motions - jet traveling, kayaking, seqwaying and hiking.  

My thanks to Dade County for giving me this idea for a lab. Thanks to my students for being all in.