The elasticity of real data

Maybe I’ve been spoiled by my experience with research… but would never have guessed that you can do some really quite scientific things with a really tight budget. I was shown a short demonstration of a science lesson in my Science C&I course today. If you take an elastic band and hang weights from it, then you record the amount of weight and the length of the elastic, you can make a graph and analyze the elastic forces within an elastic. Though this is a far cry from solving the mysteries of Parkinson’s disease or anything like that, it still does provide the student with real-to-the-world data points. The graph that one gets off this thing looks not so perfect… just the way that real data looks. The learning that I’ve had to do in the field is the learning that these students engaging in these types of tasks are doing in the classroom. Cool approach.

Q