Speaking at Graduation

Graduation is one of those times where you feel genuinely lucky to be a high school teacher.  I am sure that there are perks to being involved with elementary and middle school age groups, but for me, high school is the pinnacle of achievement.  I know that there are plenty of coming-of-age ceremonies, but high school graduation truly takes the proverbial cake.  

I was lucky enough to have known many of the graduating seniors for their entire high school career.  Like every single year, a part of you cheers when they graduate, and a part of you is brokenhearted that they are leaving.  This year was a bit different as I am leaving the school with them.  

I wish I could express in the written word just how powerful the emotions can run when you are leaving a place that truly feels like home.  

I always thought that I liked these kids until they decided that they wanted to have me speak at graduation.  I have dodged speaking at graduation for many years now, and they were not going to take no for an answer.  In the past i have used such tactics as blackmail, extortion, and bribery to make sure that I was taken off of any potential speaking list.  Last year I was able to convince a few kids to change their votes.  I lost by two votes.  It was great.

There was no getting out of it this year.  

Without further adieu, here is my speech.  Yup, my wife video-taped it.  Thanks... not...

Well, I tried.  What more can I say?  With graduating seniors like this, you would be hard-pressed to say no.

Trebuchet Project Day 4

If you have been following this blog for the past few weeks, you know that the algebra I class has been working on trebuchets.  These ancient siege weapons are a great tool to help explain how parabolic flight works and are just plain awesome to build.  

Here are the previous entries on this topic.  Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.  This will be the last installment of this series, unless we find some awesome things to launch.

After our initial builds and successful testing of the trebuchet, it was time to just have some fun... you know... in the name of science!

So, in that light, we decided to launch anything and everything that we could find.  This of course ended up meaning that we launched bits of fruit off of the fruit trees on campus, a few students hacky sacks, and a football for good measure.  I also accidentally found out that if you end up putting the football a bit off-center that you could make a great spiral.  The football was especially fun as we had a few kids stand in the field to try to play catch... with a siege engine.  Teaching never has a boring moment. 

That is one sentence I never thought I would write.  Ever.  Kids playing catch with a siege engine.  

I went to graduate school for this.  Talk about money well spent.

Without further tangential writing, here you have it:

The first video is an amazingly good orange launch.  I love how the kids were able to use their cell phones to make the slow motion video.  I love what technology allows us as teachers to do today.  We were able to watch the videos together to try and figure out just how effective our launch angle was and help us adjust anything for a better future launch.  

An ulu is a breadfruit, and this one was particularly rotten.  The kids had seen that the breadfruit tree was full of fruit while we were walking up to the launch site and were asking if we could launch one.  The rotten one on the ground was a great compromise as no one would eat it and it would make an awesome splat.  Check out the video for a very nice fruit explosion at the end.  

Again, with any project of this size, safety comes first, and I am glad to say that with all of the construction, trees getting chopped down, concrete blocks dropping, and swing arms flying, we did not have a single injury.  Another successful project.  

Trebuchet Project Part 3

After a few more days of building and testing, we have finally made a working model of a trebuchet.  The best part of this situation is that the student have had the opportunity to learn more than just math and physics, but have also had the chance to learn a skill that many students do not get to learn in a school setting.  By the time that this unit reached the end of the building phase, many students were lashing logs and tying knots with minimal assistance and were able to think on a much more geometric level in their understanding of strength in construction and how to plan on potential weight issues in building.

As you can see, the final product is all items that we scrounged around campus, and is completely made with only sticks, rope, a block of concrete, and a single nail.  The nail is used in the firing pin, and that is only because we did not want to have to tie on a smaller stick for fear that it would not last as long.  

We had to take a picture with everyone crowding around their finished siege weapon, (just in case it broke on the first shot).  Thankfully it did not, and we were able to fire about ten times on our first day of testing.  The hard part of firing is to try to get the item to release at about a 45 degree angle so we can reach maximum distance.  Of course that takes a good deal of trial and error, but by the last shot, we were able to at least release at an upward trajectory.  We were using a rather light object, and plan to try with heavier projectiles next class, which in theory should release earlier.  

One of the students was charged with the task of taking a slow motion video of the launches so that we could analyze the degree of launch.  The following video is in slow motion and you can see a projectile in the upper left-hand corner of the screen leaving the frame shortly before the end of the video.  

We are still finishing up the trebuchet from the other class, and I will post about that as soon as they are done.  I can honestly say that this class far exceeded my expectations and did a stellar job in the construction and implementation of this project.