So for my Teaching Adolescents class last week, Brenda asked if I could teach the Ball and Ramp experiment we did in the Intro to Ed class in order to teach constructivism. Obviously I agreed to do so and I can't believe how well it went! The premise of the assignment is to build a ramp with both an incline and a decline of at least 3 inches (first drop doesn't count) and then have the ball roll exactly 6 feet and stop completely on it's own. It is certainly a lot harder then it sounds but I was shocked to find that one group completed this task very quickly. Once they got it to stop exactly at the 6 foot mark, they simply quit though instead of continuing to test it, even though when they presented it, it still went exactly 6 feet. I also found it particularly interesting that the two groups who had the future math teachers, were the ones who were most successful. Here is a photo of the beginnings of the winning ramp:
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