Does your student think their fast? Well, let’s see them prove it! This is a quick and fun lesson that will measure your student’s reflex reaction time. Not only will the student use certain math skills to calculate their speed of reaction but they will also graph and be able to see a pattern to learn about what type of regression their data will make.
First lets start with some definitions: Speed: The rate or a measure of the rate of motion Reaction: An action performed or a feeling experienced in response to a situation or event Regression: assists in drawing conclusion about a set of data.
Goal: For students to measure how long it takes their brain to process and act on a verbal command.
What You Need:
· Groups made of at least 2 students each · Yardstick · Paper and pen/pencil for recording results · Graph paper
What You Do:
1. First place the class into groups of 2 students or more. I would recommend 3 since one student will be dropping the yardstick, another student catches the yardstick and the third student can record the results
2. Start by holding the yardstick upright a few feet off the ground. Make sure that you mark your starting point so that the yardstick is in the same place at the beginning of each trial.
3. Have the student whose reaction is being measured (the student catching the yardstick) place their fingers and thumb around the very bottom of the yardstick. Make sure their eyes are closed so that they react strictly off of voice command and not by visual cues.
4. The student dropping the yardstick yells Go! As they drop the yardstick. The child catching will react by closing their fingers around the stick as they hear the command.
5. After the student catches the yardstick record the inches on paper and then convert the inches to seconds using dimensional analysis.
6. Repeat steps 2-5 ten times.
7. Graph the ten trials and see what the graph says about your students’ rate of reaction.
*Use this formula to go from inches to seconds: #of inches caught / 36inches = # of seconds
We use this formula because we want to know the fraction of a second it takes to catch however many inches the student catches
* Next try with eyes open to see if there's a difference!
Questions to concider:
1. What do you notice about both results?
2. Did the student have a faster reaction time with their eyes open or closed? Why?
3. How can you manipulate this activity so that the student have more accurate and faster results?