Education Technology

Science: Curve Ball

by Texas Instruments

Overview

In this activity, students' will create a Height-Time plot for a bouncing ball and use a quadratic equation to describe the ball's motion.

Key Steps

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    With a bouncing ball and a CBR2, students derive a quadratic in vertex form and factored form.

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    Students use guess-and-check method to find the leading coefficient and in the process learn its relationship with the shape of the graph.

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    An extension of this activity includes doing a quadratic regression that gives the quadratic equation in standard form.