Miguel O'Hara (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
what_the_shock) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomhigh2019-01-15 01:04 pm
what_the_shock) wrote in fandomhigh2019-01-15 01:04 pm
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Problem Solving Through Science, Tuesday 3rd period
Today when the students got in, Miguel presented them all with toy cars. They were kind of cool looking, but they had no batteries.
"Here's your problem," he said without preamble. "Start your car here, get it to the other side of the room." The room was about half the size of a football field today. "I'm being nice, so there's no obstacles, so you don't have to worry about steering them. Just find the energy to move them and make it work. And in keeping with the theme of science, your method has to be replicable - meaning it has to work more than once, and if you gave someone else instructions on how you did it, it'd work for them, too."
His car had a spider on it. He was considering giving it legs as well as some sort of complex battery.
"You can use the room to generate whatever parts you need."
Enjoy!
"Here's your problem," he said without preamble. "Start your car here, get it to the other side of the room." The room was about half the size of a football field today. "I'm being nice, so there's no obstacles, so you don't have to worry about steering them. Just find the energy to move them and make it work. And in keeping with the theme of science, your method has to be replicable - meaning it has to work more than once, and if you gave someone else instructions on how you did it, it'd work for them, too."
His car had a spider on it. He was considering giving it legs as well as some sort of complex battery.
"You can use the room to generate whatever parts you need."
Enjoy!
Sign in!
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Listen to the lecture!
Class Activity!
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He was deeply influenced by the work of one Wiley Coyote.
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Miguel nodded. "Congratulations. Maybe try someway that gets the whole car there?" Instead of half a blown-up one.
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Getting it to store enough kinetic energy to make it all the way across the room took several attempts and ultimately failed anyway, so Peebee spent the rest of the class period hacking together some code and fitting the car with a winding module that she could control remotely.
All told it made the car a little too heavy to do more than move at a slow crawl, so she had to remote wind it a dozen times, but the car eventually made it across the room.
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It was dumb, it was silly, it wasn't too terribly sciency in her opinion, but it made her feel better and reminded her of why she had initially been excited to see Mr. O'Hara's name on her class roster again, so guess whose car was decked out with a few pinwheels, scooting along the floor with some help from a large fan that Astrid was holding behind it?
Not the most reliable energy source, no, but, hey! It was renewable!
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Kinetic energy, or something, right?
She shrugged a little, but there may have been a softening in her somewhere, or at least the dissipation of the rut she'd felt stuck in since she got back to the east coast.
"Just better hope you live somewhere windy."
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"Hey, all energy has some sort of prerequisite," Miguel pointed out. "Wind's usually a pretty safe one."
Okay, not usually as directly as in this instance, but still.
Talk to Miguel
OOC!