As Brock was completing his last A Beka Academy Science Project, Luke was working on his first. In 7th grade, the students plan a project, but do not actually complete the experiment or make a display. Then in 8th grade, the students go through the entire process to put together a finished science project.
Luke’s project is kind of hard to describe, and it didn’t work like we had planned. So, we had to make some modifications as we went along. His investigation involved transferring static electricity to a Leyden jar with various conditions and measuring the resulting discharge spark. The first jar that Luke built did not work. That was our biggest obstacle. It simply would not consistently discharge making the collection of data nearly impossible. So after a few days of frustration, we hunted for ideas on how to improve the jar’s design to make it more reliable. Ultimately, we completely scrapped the original design which required Luke to rethink his tests, hypotheses, etc. This was a good lesson to go through, however, and Luke was very persistent in getting the project finished. Now we know that it is a pretty good idea to test a procedure out early in the planning stages of the project just to make sure everything works right….sigh…..
Anyway, we eventually got the data we needed, and Luke got his display made. Here is a slideshow of his project followed by a video of his oral presentation:
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