TOWAMENCIN – Students in Principles of Technology classes are celebrating the holiday season in a rather unique manner. We all know Santa’s elves spend countless hours putting toys together for boys and girls all over the world. However, the boys and girls in Mr. Waddington’s classes spent the days preceding our holiday break ripping those toys apart!
Thanks to the generous donations of many students and faculty members there was diverse assortment of used and abused electronic toys, games and other devices. This “Alter Elf” activity was a culmination to a unit in which students studied and performed experiments related to voltage and electrical circuits. Dissection of these electronic devices provided a fun way to explore the “How and Why” these gadgets do what they do. One goal of this activity is to demystify these technological wonders and develop ourselves from being simply “users of technology” to being “understanders of technology”.
Several students in one class worked independently on investigating the dreidel and scientific principles behind how it functions. They created experiments to determine the probability of the dreidel landing on its four sides. Additionally, they set out to determine if there is a correlation between the dreidel’s speed of rotation and the amount of time it remains upright.
As one student, Carmen Olleros, stated, “We are breaking past the boundaries of pencil and paper… We are getting into where the wires are to see how this stuff works!”