Weekly Progress

Week 1
Our group came up with five ideas for possible lab modules:

1. Conservation of Energy: Students construct a track for a small toy car and calculate the potential energy at the beginning of the track and the kinetic energy at the bottom of the track.
2. Reduction and Oxidation (Redox): Making a voltaic cell (Battery) using knowledge about voltaic cells to construct a battery and light a bulb using various metals and aqueous solutions.  
3.  Friction: Determining the coefficient of static friction for different surfaces on an incline plane.
4. Tension: Hanging a weight from two ropes at different angles and using Newton’s Laws to calculate the tension in each rope. 
5. Circuits: Setting up different styles of circuits such as parallel vs series. Furthermore, looking into using resistors and different lights/switches to complete certain tasks.

Our group came up with ten considerations for designing the lab:

1. Safety 
2. Reliability
3. Concept is focused
4. Cost
5. Durability
6. Environmental impact
7. Ease of assembly
8. Satisfies a need (Has a purpose/demand)
9. Material (Best material to work with)
10. Difficulty (Is too easy or too difficult for a middle/ high school student?)

Week 2

Our group narrowed down the five possible ideas to three well developed, ideas.

• Oxidation Reduction Reactions: Students will construct a basic voltaic cell that shows how electrons travel in redox reactions through a current in a wire that can be used to power a small lightbulb. Students should demonstrate comprehension of redox reactions, the purpose of the salt bridge, and the flow of electric current. This lab will be used for students in high school, who are in either an engineering or chemistry class.

• Newton's 2nd Law: Students will hang a single mass from two strings positioned at equal and use a protractor to measure these angles. Using knowledge of static forces and free body diagrams, the students will calculate the tension in each rope. This process will then be repeated with the strings positioned at two different angles to increase the difficulty of the calculations. 

• Electricity: Students will first draw a parallel circuit, where resistors (Such as light bulbs and normal resistor) along with other components to construct a complex circuit. Once the circuit is drawn, calculate the current (Voltage will be given along with the resistance of the resistors) using Ohm’s law (V = IR). Furthermore, voltage across resistors can be calculated too (Ohm’s law again). Once this is done, construct the circuit, and use the voltmeter and ammeter to confirm the theoretical numbers calculated. Once this is all done, percent error can be calculated from the theoretical and experimental answers found. Repeat these steps for a series circuit.

We then used our 10 considerations from week 1 to create a decision matrix to evaluate our three potential labs. This was included in the first draft of our Design Proposal, which discussed the overall tasks and goals for this project and compared the specifics of each possible lab. 

Week 3
Our group finished the first draft of our Design Proposal, which can be located in our Project Overview section.  Our Proposal outlines our design project and each of our potential lab experiments. In our Design Proposal, we also included our Decision Matrix, comparing all three potential lab experiments. Our Decision Matrix allowed for us to see the pros and cons of each experiment, leading us to decide that the Electricity Lab was the most efficient. We also included a Gantt Chart, where we drafted out general timeline for the design project.

Our Group also began drafting out ideas for the written reports, following along with the timeline on our Gantt Chart.

Week 4
Our group began greater developing the electricity lab. We made a list of the needed materials and began the outline for the lab activity, with the goal of ensuring the experiment will take the entire 150 minutes without being boring and repetitive for the students. After creating the outline we began discussing what information should be included in the lab manual, drafting pre-lab conceptual questions, and designing the circuit diagrams the students will be using. The outline and materials list can be found in the project overview page of our blog.

Week 5
Our group began gathering the materials necessary to complete the lab experiment. From there we finalized our materials list, ordering any materials that were not available to us through the innovation studio. After collecting some of our materials, we began the hands on experience of drafting our prototype. From this we concluded that our teacher lab manual should include a short lesson at the beginning of the lab explaining uses of the breadboard, resistors and multi-meters. The lesson will also include a short background on circuits, Kirchhoff and Ohm's Laws, as well as a generalized overview of the lab experiment. This led us to begin drafting our student and teacher lab manuals.

Week 6 
Our group began working out our physical prototype, running into a few errors with the amplitude of the battery shorting out the LED diodes. From this we began coming up with ideas to solve this. Such as, using a lower voltage battery, applying more resistors, finding strong LED diodes. We also continued drafting our student and teacher lab manuals. This week we also presented our elevator speech to the class, this prepared us for the short time frames we will get to pitch our lab idea.

Week 7 

Our group finished the draft of our student teacher lab manuals. In lab we received notes from our peers on what to improve on our manual. We began making improvements to make our lab manuals easier to understand and read from both the student and teacher stand point. We also continued trouble shooting our lab prototype. We came to the conclusion that the resistors we were using were not all the same, the LED we were able to light used a 220 ohms while the rest all had 220,000 ohms, not providing enough current to the bulb. From this we were able to switch to the correct resistors and get all four LEDs to light up in a parallel circuit.

Week 8

Our group finished putting together 2 out of 3 of  our circuit prototypes, taking videos to include in our final presentation. We will be putting together the third and final circuit prototype this week in lab, taking a video to include in the final presentation.  We also continued editing our student and teacher lab manuals and will be finishing them in the following week. Our group also began brainstorming about our final presentation. 

Week 9 

Our group finished out last circuit prototype and took our final video to include in the final presentation. Our group also started drafting our final presentation, assigning each slide to group members to complete. We continued to edit and finalize our teacher and student lab manuals.  

Week 10 

Our group finalized all of our deliverables and bean preparing for our final presentation.