Our last day of the Constant Velocity Unit included our first Challenge Lab in 1st year physics! This particular challenge lab has been well documented elsewhere. Here’s a little of how we did it today, including a trick I learned for making sure the cars actually hit.
I use the following format to encourage/require teams to work together to solve the challenge. Splitting up the work into these different sub-sections encourages students to follow a process when solving complex problems, and also provides structure for making sure that everyone gets to play a part in the process.
Interestingly enough, the most common successful method of solving this was by using a graph. The idea of an intersection point is just so much clearer once they start creating a graph. Many students struggled solving this with algebra as a first approach, but were able to understand and figure out how to set up and solve a system of equations once they realized how the equations correlate with what is going on in their graphs.
Randall Physics 