Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets are great way for the students to analyze large quantities of data while not getting caught up in arithmetic mistakes. It is also a great way to show kids the power that computers have to make our lives a little easier. The keys are time, patience, and practice. I would say however, it is important that students have a strong background in the formulas that they are using in the spreadsheet. In engineering we have a project in which the kids create a ballistic device that fires a ping-pong ball up to 20 feet. The students are instructed to launch the ball at different angles and record the distance. From this data, we use spreadsheets to calculate the initial velocity that the ball is being fired at and the average firing distance at each angle. It is imperative that the students fire the ball "the same way" each time in order to maintain the integrity of the data. Cool stuff!