Planetary distances and frisbee exploratory lab

This term the loss of class on Tuesday led to my simply bringing the 13 planets book along during the planetary placement walk.


Jane rose shows Saturn, which was located at the LRC.



That would be me, lecturing from a rather unorthodox position.



Little wonder my students are sometimes baffled and confused. This is their view of my lecture.



That would be Uranus, a mini-marble.



Jane Rose reads from the book.



Neptune out by the men's residence hall.



Risenta, Michael, Rockson, Shane, Mackleen, Tina Sue, Tracy - in an apparent state of shock - and Jimmy.



Uh, that would be Pluto. The BB under my thumb was the size of Earth.

The afternoon laboratory was an experiment. I asked the class to explore whether the flight time, distance, and velocity of a horizontally thrown Frisbee could be plotted against each other pairwise to generate a linear relationship. I know how to calculate flight distances and times for freely falling objects, but Frisbees do not free fall.



Jane Rose with a stop watch



Risenta with a GPS used to measure distances in meters



Tracy Donre in the background throwing.
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