Introduction

Class Schedule

This Week

Classrooms

Field Reports

Student Projects

Map Library

Chat Room

Video Library

Trail Guides

Members

Search

                       






Camp Internet Backcountry Outpost Briefing


February 26 - March 2, 2001



Leaping Lizard its time for Jumping Frogs

This week we invite your class to feature the Mark Twain story of the Calaveras Jumping Frog Contest. The history of how the story came to be is online at http://www.rain.org/campinternet/backcountry/humanities/twain/twain-jumpingfrogs.html . See a classroom exercise outline below.

TEACHERS ONLY - How to Create Your Own Internet Dig - try out the sample Dig in the Teacher's Chat room and then - create your own ! Guided steps provided to empower every teacher to create their own interactive Dig. We will showcase your work next month, so we ask EVERY TEACHER to test out a Dig in the Chat Room this month to perfect your end product. Imagine yourself, as a teacher, building links to resources from the Internet to tell your students a story that gives them insight into the life and times of people from long ago. What will you tell them ? what will you show them ? What will you ask them ? What will they Learn ? this is the FUN of creating your OWN Internet Dig! Try it out in the teacher's chat room this week !!!

History Focus

This is our last week featuring the Gold Rush - be sure to catch as much of this exciting period online as you can. Next week we move into the Railroads era.

Reading Feature

Mark Twain is now one of the most famous literary giants to live in California and he was here for the Gold Rush with some amazing stories of his own experiences. Teachers and students alike can read about the Miners Cat, the Jumping Frogs, and his sojourn into the Backcountry to Lake Tahoe. Great reading and all available online in Camp Internet !

If Mark Twain and Isaac Newton Held a Frog Jumping Race

Teachers Outline

Mark Twain's first nationally famous story, Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, was written around 1865 while Twain was in California during the Gold Rush. This piece of California semi-fiction became a part of California's - and Twain's -legendary history. It is an excellent short story for reading, comparative language, social studies and science interests. The story introduces students to Twain's humorous style of American writing, it reveals something insightful about the madcap, winner-takes-all, anything-goes attitude of the California Gold Rush period, and, it offers us a potential science lesson. Twain's re-conversion of the story from French back into English is also a great project for a classroom read aloud.

When Twain tells us about Daniel Webster, and his owners prideful boasting about the frogs jumping abilities, we are learning something important about the tendency for a boast to become a roast if one is not watchful. And when the frog race takes place, we also learn something that Isaac Newton would have appreciated - and it is a demonstration of his second law of motion :

a = F / m of F =ma

The larger the force (F), the larger the acceleration (a); the larger the mass (m), the smaller the acceleration (a).

Let's try this hypothesis out in our own frog jumping contest, shall we ? Please record your results - or adaptation - online.

Camp provides each Backcountry classroom with the Mark Twain book for reading, and, three small green bean bag frogs for our experiment. Each frog weighs approximately 2.1 ounces. To change the mass of two of the frogs, tie something with greater mass than the frog to one of its leg. Try to add a least half a pound / 8 oz to one of the frog's leg. Then try to tie something at around a pound / 16 oz to the third frog's leg.

Now line the students up out on a grassy field surface. There are two possible ways to conduct this experiment; PAIRS and THREE GROUPS. In both cases the distance the frogs land from the thrower is not an important factor - it is not distance throwing. In fact, students should be asked to toss it, underhand, no more than 10-12 feet before them. To make this obvious, the teacher can lay out a string on the grass that has felt pen marks at one foot intervals up to 15 feet.

1. PAIRS Pair two students up. They will take turns. One will serve as the watcher to see if the thrower is consistent with each throw. The thrower, when their turn comes, should hold one frog in their hand, and then toss it, underhand, forwards, noting the thrust with which they throw it, and the position of their hand when they release it. Then they should hold another frog in exactly the same way in their hand, imitate the same thrust and release point while tossing and toss each of the other two frogs, one at a time, towards the first frog that was tossed. Each watcher should help their fellow student make sure the thrower's feet and body remains in the same position, that they swing their arm consistently, and that they release the frogs at the same point in the arc of their swing. Any deviations from the standard toss means redoing that toss. The pair of students should then note which frog went furthest, and which is closest. The goal is to create as consistent a force (F) as possible, while letting the frogs and their attachments be the change in mass (m) for each frog tossed. What were the results ? Have them write them down. When the entire group has completed their throws, compile the results and see if there is a consistent pattern. Does this pattern match Daniel Webster's race ? Of the two exercises, this one is the most likely to have the same result as Twain's race because there are fewer variables effecting the outcome of each student's results.

2. THREE GROUPS Using the same science principals, the class could divide up into three equal groups, each with a different weighted frog. If students are in three lines, and the distance between each student in a line is the average distance that that weight of frog goes when tossed underhand, then each line will see that the students in the line are spaced at different intervals ( and the lines will be three different lengths). With a ready-set-go, the first student in line should toss, underhanded, their frog to the next student in line, and so on, until it reaches the back of the line. If all things were equal, and the force, timing of acceleration, and mass were the same with each throw, then each frog would end up at the last person in line at the same time. But the odds are that force and timing of acceleration will be ever changing variables. Let them run the race and see who gets their frog to the end of their line first. Then have students figure out which force or forces made the race un-equal. Did students in the same line toss their frogs at different strengths ? ( force or 'F') Did students in the faster line toss their frogs with greater force for all or more of the throws ? Did students that came in second and third change speeds in the time it took to catch it turn and toss it to the next person ? (timing in this case affects consistency of acceleration or 'a'). Let them try it over and over again as they experiment with the different variables that effect the time it takes them to move their frog from the front to the back of the line. Did the heaviest or the lightest frog make it to the back of the line first ? This exercise is less likely to match Daniel Webster's due to the 3 or more variables possible times the number of students in the line, but the same science principals are being explored.

Camp00-bc-l mailing list
Camp00-bc-l@rain.org
http://www.rain.org/mailman/listinfo/camp00-bc-l