Musings on the Wednesday questions

1. The actual density does fall within the 90% and 95% confidence intervals for density. Our group had sample B. We calculated the density to be 2.79 g/ml. We determined that the sample was aluminium which has an actual density of 2.698 g/ml. The significance of the confidence level is that it allows us to ascertain the identify of the unknown solid without having an exact match between the experimental density and densities of known solids.

2. The confidence interval increase causes and increase between the possible density values of the substance. If you explain the concept of what the interval represents, then this increase in the range of the densities due to the percent confidence intervals is intuitive. In the classroom, I use the idea of tolerance levels for manufacturing in tech prep math questions, the concept is similar in how to determine the intervals.

3. If an error is made early and only on one of the parameters, then it would initially effect the outcome, but is not other similar errors are made during the course of the experiment, then the error's effect should abate as we add more and more data.

4. I would again same that a focus light along a path (laser, particle beam, etc) would be the answer to the original question. Secondly, the power of a bulb is measured in watts and from out data, with k being 5.43 (coefficient of our regression line) times 4 pi then power would be 68 watts approximately. If I averaged the k values of our three results then I would get a lower wattage of around 60, which is probably closer to the actual value.

5. In my class, I have a notebook, and I utilize journal writer, ti-smartview, and powerpoint quite frequently (daily) I also have used excel spreadsheets in my tech prep math classes and sometimes in my algebra classes. The problem arises from availability of laptops or computers. Next year Mount Vernon is at a one to one ratio and I should be able to use spreadsheet more frequently across the board. I have tried using email to contact absent students with assignments and worksheets (word or adobe files). I have not used blogs, web quests or probes. I do have a single cbl and cbr but have not really used them too much. But google is a wonderful source of information. Once in geometry, I was having the students use the journal writer individually to write conditional statements. One of my students, have the statement "a hagfish is a chordate" , she had to identify the hypothesis and conclusion. The interesting thing is she asked what a hagfish looked like, so I told her to google it. She did and then pasted a picture of a hagfish by her statement.