hawk projects

The Hawks worked on their Clocks project declarations all of last week, and were duly rewarded by approvals on each one! Mackenzie reports that the iteration practice that they got with their chairs during the Rulers arc has led the Hawks to imagining several different drafts of the projects they'll be working on for the next few weeks. They also closely linked their projects to the concepts that they explored during the Exploration phase.Today they got to work! Mackenzie wrote about each of her students' projects on her blog last week, which I will duplicate here:"Natasha will be using surveys and meticulous self-reporting to research how diet and eating habits affect sleep. During our study of body clocks, Natasha really loved the process of sorting and graphing large amounts of information. She will be finding the mean, median, and mode of her collected data and use different graphing tools to help her better understand the relationship between her two variables. Her first hand research will be supported by more research into circadian rhythms!"Today she made a survey booklet on the computer to track her bandmates' sleeping and eating patters."Bruno will be creating a metal garden sundial. This project has two main challenges: how to join pieces of metal and how to space the numbers around the face of the dial so it tells time accurately. Bruno will continue working one on one with either Sean or Josh as he masters welding! The far more difficult challenge will be to figure out the spacing of numbers on the clock dial. This will require a better understanding of the movement of the earth around the sun and seasonality. I suspect it will require some pretty complicated math as well."Today, Bruno and the rest of the Hawks got their first lesson in welding!"Lola and Clementine will be working together on a ball run clock. The essence of any time-telling device is to take the continuous flow of energy and slow it/translate it into increments. Lola and Clementine will be translating the continuous force that gravity exerts on a ball into a clock. Each of them will work on different sections of the ball run - first trying to make a minute-long ball run, then a five-minute-long ball run. Their goal is to eventually create an hour-long ball run by connecting their separate ball run structures."Today the girls worked on their first version of their ball run. Clementine reports that it was 10 seconds long."Ben and Quinn will be making weight powered mechanical clock from laser cut pieces. They will be working closely with Sean to learn how to use the laser cutter and, if they express interest, how to make their own gears on Adobe Illustrator. In creating their own clock they have the opportunity to get to know mechanical clocks intimately. They will learn about escapements, gear trains and gear ratios. They already have their first gear and escapement cut and will be assembling it next week!"Today the boys worked diligently to accomplish this goal.