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This week we continued the ramp activity from last week. We reviewed a few terms from last week such as friction, speed, angle, and gravity. We also went through the engineering design process again and applied how last week's challenge of building an adjustable ramp to the engineering design process.

This week they needed to build small cars, that they would be able to roll down their ramp. They had really wanted to build cars, so they started working right away. One group still needed to finish their ramp. To get them to work together more efficiently, I did not allow them to build their car. They were only allowed to build the car when they were done building the ramp. They got a little sidetracked and forgot their cars needed to fit onto their, pretty narrow ramps. Next, I had set up a long stretch of masking tape on the ground marked off in inches. I taught them how to use a protractor, and how to measure the angle, and which angle they should use to record (i.e. 40 not 140). I had them setup their ramps starting from the smallest angle and roll their car down and then record the distance the car travelled. They continued to do this for increasing degrees of the angle. 

Overall, it was pretty successful. One group stayed on track the whole time, while the other still had a few issues working together. In the end, I think they understood how to build a very simple car and they understood the relationship between the distance the car travelled and the angle of their ramp.