Problems involving chains, cables, or ropes that are dropped, folded, or pass around pulleys attract ongoing interest, in part because they can become variable-mass situations if the chain is partitioned into sections for analysis. Less attention has been paid to trying to intentionally project the end of a string as far as possible. Here we…

Cognitively demanding tasks have been shown to support students' understanding of mathematics. How a task is launched, or introduced, determines how students engage with the task, as well as the type of work the teacher engages in during the task implementation. The authors designed a unit focused on launching a task where prospective teachers…

This orientation session was designed to prepare students for their final MBA Capstone project, leverage lessons learned from graduates, transfer prior learning about teams and project management, and launch consulting projects with actual clients. Companies have used orientation sessions to onboard new employees for many years to improve…

The ballistic pendulum apparatus is a fairly ubiquitous element of the introductory physics laboratory, as the pendulum and launcher gun can be used together or independently to demonstrate a variety of concepts from conservation laws to projectile motion to the motion of a physical pendulum. In this work, we control the launch speed of the gun to…

Cognitively demanding tasks provide important opportunities for students to develop an understanding of mathematics; however, they are challenging to launch and implement. The authors designed a secondary methods unit on launching tasks. Participants in the study were enrolled in five different methods courses. Using a noticing framework, findings…

Nicolas Senior shows how EMC3 's Launch-Explore-Summarise/Review model for mathematics lesson structuring sets the conditions to get the most out of both dialogic and direct instruction. He argues that this model will help teachers walk the balance between order and chaos.

We implemented a STEM task that highlights the engineering cycle and engages students in productive struggle. Students problem solved in productive ways and saw tangible benefits of revising their work to achieve mathematical goals.

Water rockets can be used in a variety of ways, from schools to planetariums, with very young kids or adults. We propose here simple forms to work with water rockets, going one step further than a simple launch. A smartphone can be used to film the launch and analyze its motion with video analysis or it can even be attached to the rocket, using…

This report profiles five public PreK-12 learning education agencies across the U.S. that participated in the Digital Promise Center for Inclusive Innovation Teacher of Color Recruitment and Retention cohort and utilized the Inclusive Innovation model to create and launch locally contextualized programs designed by teachers of color.

An atlatl or spearthrower is perhaps humanity's oldest technology for accelerating projectiles. The dynamics prior to launch of the dart projectile have been much discussed in the literature. In this article we present a simple new model of launch dynamics and show that dart flex is not an important factor in determining launch speed, but it…

 Today's elementary teachers are expected to teach the engineering practices included in the National Research Council's Framework for K-12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards. Recent studies have indicated that teachers are less self-efficacious in teaching engineering than in other subject areas. Project Lead the…

A well-known conclusion from elementary ballistic trajectory analysis is that the horizontal range of a projectile is maximized for a launch angle of 45°. The derivation of this result assumes that the launch speed is the same for all possible launch angles, but this neglects the fact that the work done against gravity by the launching mechanism…

Teachers' perceptions of written curriculum influence the way in which they use the curriculum. As multiple states begin to implement state specific standards, understanding the perceptions teachers may have of these standards is critical. This study used quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate the perceptions teachers had of one…

Honors colleges have offered an academically rigorous option for growing numbers of diverse students. This study took place at a large, public university that required undergraduate students to complete a thesis to graduate from the honors college. In 2017, 97% of students who began the honors thesis prior to senior year completed it. Thus, the…

The drag effect on a falling ball caused by air is a conventional subject in the most well-known textbooks of classical mechanics and fluid dynamics. Further, there are some papers that employ video analysis to track objects movements in the air making it possible to obtain position data as a function of time and its graphs. However, none of them…