Potential Energy, Roller Coasters, Flames - Heather D

Class was a blast.  It was great to explore in groups the different gadgets.  These are definitely things I will do with my own children.  In fact, they wanted to play last night instead of myself.

 My first task was to create a roller coaster.  I quickly gave myself 10 cars - (or whatever was the most you could have).  My first try was ok, but I did crash at the end.  I changed things around, and this was my final try for the session.

Yay!  I did not crash at the end, and I got a great score of 2,164.  My goal is to get a better one.  I will have to play around with it some more.

Next, I got to go into Minecraft and work on the roller coaster.  I soon found myself plummeting into a pit of lava.  Try as I might, I could not fly out.  Luckily for me, our fearless leader, Colin, said at the same time I was trying to get out, to use Left-Shift to get out of the cart.  I had not thought that I would still be in the cart while burning to death.  We got our cart to stop on the second try.  I was nervous I would plummet to my burning not death again, but I teetered right there on the edge.  Yay for our group.

Lastly, I got to play with the skateboarder.  Chip mentioned that the goal was to launch the skateboarder off so that he landed on the house.  WHALAH!     

PLUS - I had a super cool bulldog skate boarding for me.  

 In all seriousness,  it was a fun night reminding myself about Potential Energy and dissipated energy and heat energy.  These are all great activities to do with my own children and students.  I am a little nervous about doing the PE of the monster lobe, but also realize that maybe I should have used my older two children for my project, because these assignments are perfect stepping stones for the Monster Lobe project.  I imagine it was planned that way, and I hope that others who are doing the Monster Lobe with students are using these assignments with them.