Roller Coasters!

Tis week we talked about how gravitational potential energy is used to propel roller coasters through twists, turns, and loops.  In class, we made roller coasters using 3x5 cards.  We each had a potential energy "budget" that came from a ramp set at a fixed height.  If someone wanted to use more energy, they had to design a ride that went off the table to the ground.

My Student's are making a Video Game. Pt 1

Last semester, I dabbled in RPG Maker VX Ace with my computer class.  I had them help out with elements of a game that I produced.  I've decided to pull out all of the stops and give them complete creative control of the building process.

RPG Maker VX Ace has a wonderful mapping utility.

The plan is to have them handle all of the writing and design elements of the game while I do the grunt work over the course of the next semester.  So far, I've had them begin the writing of the story and even write up a budget for our "game studio."  These fulfill the requirements of my class to review MS Word and Excel.

The blank map is used to select random shapes for continents.

Next, I am doing some work with GIMP to teach image manipulating.  The first thing we've done is made world maps.  Each student starts with a "blank" map.  They then select chunks to be the continents and add details to separate the biomes and climates.  These designs can then be translated into RPG Maker VX Ace.

Here's something I cooked up in GIMP.

Meteorites!

With the recent meteorite action in Russia, I thought it would be a great time to bust out my own meteorite activity in class.  I put dishes of flour on the tables and had students drop objects from different heights.  They also tested to see if an object with more mass would make a larger crater.