with Ed Insel Conducting ResearchWe started class with a review of the students’ Google Search results. The main findings were:
I gave them a list of domains on the first five pages of the climate change search and highlighted the ones I’ve found to be reliable and would read first.
Connecting to Current Events![]() For current events I shared the success that Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories recently reported. Newspapers reported it, but the best information comes from the LLNL site – why rely on someone else to interpret information you can read yourself? Using lasers, they’ve ignited a nuclear fusion reaction that gives off more energy than it consumes. We also discussed the broad media coverage of the drought in California but there has been very limited mention of the discovery of a vast amount of fresh water in aquifers under the ocean floor that are easily reachable drilling from onshore. For the last 30 minutes of class the students worked on a project to experimentally determine the numerical value of pi (π). They measured the diameter (d) and circumference (C) of seven objects and will use the equation C = πd to calculate pi. Homework for Next SessionAs soon as possible, one member of each team should email me their data (object, diameter, and circumference). Each student should calculate π for each object and then average them to come up with a single value for π. They are using their Engineering Journals to keep records of all their work. In next week’s warm-up we’ll compare the teams’ calculations and see whose value comes closest to the theoretical value. This will lead us into ways to quantify data variation and identify the sources of error.
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