Bouncing Ball Lab with Mr. Muhammad in MYP

Grade 5s had their minds blown this week and last week by MYP’s marvelous and mystifying Mr. Muhammad aka MR. SCIENCE. We had 2 sessions in the lab where we were expected to put theory into practice. We have absorbed so much information about energy over the past four weeks in class that it was time to carry out a challenging practical activity and apply energy theory to real life.

From the captivating and scintillating introduction, to the activity of bouncing balls, the students were hooked. We gained a lot of new knowledge and also consolidated a substantial amount of research applying it to a hand son experiment. It was absolutely awesome! We dropped a ball from different heights and measured how far it bounced back. We used meter sticks to measure the height that balls bounced and recorded our results, taking into account variables as well as the need for accuracy. The scientist typically will change some conditions and then see how other conditions are affected. We collected data and then which gave us clues to help us answer the question we were testing. Once we had gathered all of our scienific data, we plotted our results on graphs and predicted various other scenarios using the graph to estimate scientifically.

Thank you sincerely to Mr. Muhammad! We can’t wait to have you as our teacher in MYP!

Here are just some of the key learning points:

Energy is the ability to do work.

The Law of Conservation of Energy states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it only changes form.

Independent variable: What the scientist changes – cause

Dependent variable: What responds to the change – effect

Best fit line fro graphing data