ELA Component

For my ELA component, I am going to write journal entries. This is so I can follow up on my progress as I do my Ballistic Car project.

October 15, 2013

Today our physics teacher, Mr. Ekinci, showed us the projects that we could do for PBL. I chose the Ballistic Car, because it sounded cool and fun. Hopefully I will learn this project well and be able to teach it to others.

October 21, 2013

Today Mr. Ekinci showed me the ballistic car and let me play around with it. I began to get familiar with it and how it works. It's relatively simple and easy, but I noticed that there are a few things that I need to watch out for in order for the demonstrations to be successful.

November 1, 2013

Today I began to research my project to learn more about it and add information to my website.

November 15, 2013

Today I thought of ways in which I could do my Social Studies connection. I thought of many different things, but settled with the cannon and how it affected the history of dynamics.

November 20, 2013

Today we went to the George R. Brown Convention Center as a class and presented our PBL projects to the people who came to the event. Since this was the first time that I presented my project in front of people, I got nervous and had a few issues delivering my explanations. Unfortunately, I had a few technical problems as well. The metal ball inside the ballistic car wouldn't land back in the barrel sometimes. Whenever this happened, a long and awkward silence would follow as we all watched the ball bounce away. Several people looked at me as if that was supposed to happen. It was pretty embarrassing, but I kept going with my presentation anyway. All in all, the event was really fun and cool. We got free stuff and learned from other presentations as well.

November 29, 2013

Today I began to read "A History of Classical Physics" by J. D. Bernal to find information for my SS connection topic.

December 7, 2013

Today Mr. Ekinci and I examined the ballistic car to figure out why the ball wouldn't land back in the barrel. After close examination and experimentation, we concluded that someone had dropped the ballistic car, which resulted in the slight tilting of the barrel. This was why the ball didn't return. Mr. Ekinci said that trying to repair it would not be very useful, so he would just order a new one.

December 23, 2013

Today I finished getting information from "A History of Classical Physics." I wrote what I learned about cannons, ballistics, and dynamics in my SS connection and posted it on my website.

January 1, 2014

Happy New Year! I hope that the rest of my PBL adventure will be quick and easy.

January 7, 2014

Today Mr. Ekinci gave me the new ballistic car. It had arrived over winter break, and we just got back. We ran it through a few trial runs and decided that it was good to go.

January 8, 2014

Today Mr. Ekinci and I filmed my action video using the new ballistic car. We used slow motion effects to make the video awesome. I posted it on my website.

February 1, 2014

Today was the school-wide STEM festival. We presented our projects at the school gym to teachers, students, and parents. I think that the event was a great success. Not only did I get to show people the ballistic car and how it works, I also got to try other peoples' projects, like the Resonance Bowl for example.

February 12, 2014

Today I began to film my YouTube video with Mr. Ekinci's help. We split up the whole script into different shots and filmed it like that.