A "design problem" is one in which students are asked to define the variables of a scenario to produce a desired solution. This process highlights the relationships between variables and requires the problem solver to look wholistically at the situation. Since these problems will have thousands of answers that satisfy the requirements, I have built calculators to quickly and efficiently check the student solutions.
Motion Design Problem
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This problem is inspired by a common lab practical challenge where a ball is dropped onto a constant velocity cart. Given this objective, students need to figure out a set of properties within the acceptable range to result in the collision.
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Circular Motion Design Problem
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In this problem, students get to choose a non-Earth planet to simulate its gravity with a roller coaster feature.
For this calculator, the conditional formatting will turn green if the proposed values would produce the "perceived weight" from another planet within 5% of the exact value (to account for rounding in values). If students make the common error of matching the planet weight to the centripetal force instead of the normal force, the cell will highlight red
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Heat Design Problem
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Determine a starting an final temperature for H20 that includes a phase change and requires a heat transfer of exactly 1,000,000 J
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Astrophysics Design Problem
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In this problem, students choose one of 4 stars to calculate the brightness of given the parallax angle, max wavelength, and radius. They must then determine the luminosity and temperature of a main sequence star at a distance based on their birthday so that it has the same brightness that they calculated for the original star.
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