Just a note on the reflection questions before I start reflecting….
- How much did you know about Work and Machines before we started?
- How would you improve your Inclined Plane Lab report? Not just I would do better–think about the criterion rubric and make yourself goals to work toward!
- Discuss what would you like to studied more about in this unit? Why?
- Thinking about work and power–how do you think they will relate to the next unit–Energy?
Before starting this unit, I already knew many kinds of simple machines, including slopes (inclined planes), screws, and other simple machines. I also knew the SI unit of power output, the “watt,” since it’s commonly seen in daily life. However, I didn’t know anything else besides those kinds of simple machines, including mechanical advantage of different kinds of simple machines and the calculation of work and power. I also didn’t know about the unit of work, the “joule,” before I start this unit.
Inclined Plane Lab document:
For the inclined plane lab that I did with several classmates during this unit, which was assessed on 3 criterias in criterion C (Ciii~Cv), I rewrote the lab once because I got scores that I thought that I need to rewrite in order to improve. However, the rewritten report haven’t gotten any achievement levels yet. So here, I’ll just simply reflect on the improvements needed according to the rubric.
What I didn’t do much for the original lab report is that I didn’t reflect on the improvements based on the procedure (method) itself. I reflected only on the things that we thought that won’t work in our experiment. So, in order to get a better achievement level, I have to not only reflect on the human error, but also on the error in the method.
After completing this unit with a test regarding to all of the knowledge we learned during this unit, I think that I can learn more about the formula used to calculate the mechanical advantage of all kinds of simple machines. Although being simplified as output force/input force, this formula differs with different kinds of simple machines, for examples, the mechanical advantage of a wheel and axle has the formula of the radius of the wheel/the radius of the axle, while the MA of an inclined plane has the formula of length/height. See? Different kinds of simple machines have a different formula used to calculate its mechanical advantage. What are the other formulas used to calculate the MA of other simple machines?
Lastly, I want to talk about the connection between this unit and the next unit: Energy. Energy is closely related to work, because we need energy in order to do work. Even so, energy is divided into different kinds according to the movement of particles. For example, kinetic energy is used to do work. Without energy, we can’t move, thus we couldn’t do work since doing work requires movement, of course!