Pendulum Lab: SnapThought Prompts

Have your students signed up for individual accounts? If you have a school-wide subscription to BrainPOP, students will be able to use our SnapThought ® tool to explore the Pendulum Lab sim!

SnapThought allows students to capture meaningful moments in their game play with opportunities for brief written reflection. To use the tool, start by making sure students are logged into My BrainPOP with their own individual accounts. Once students are logged in, the SnapThought tool will appear below any games or sims that offer this capability.

During game play, students can click the SnapThought tool up to five times. A thumbnail, or “snapshot” is generated and stored on the bottom left of the screen.  At any point in the game, students can click their snapshot(s), type a brief reflection, which may be a response to an open-ended prompt, and save or submit to the teacher’s account for you to review and respond to.

You can use the SnapThought tool to facilitate discussion around game play and strategies, or have students submit their snapshots to you for assessment or accountability. Here are a few ideas and prompts for using the SnapThought tool in the Pendulum Lab sim.

• Determine a method to measure the period without using the Period Timer tool. Take a snapshot of what your method and describe it.
• Take a snapshot of the controlled experiment you design. Explain what variable your experiment is testing. Predict the outcome.
• Take a snapshot of the Energy Graph and estimate the speed of the pendulum (e.g. maximum, medium, or zero).
• Take a snapshot of the Energy Graph and predict the position of the pendulum.
• Take a snapshot and predict the direction and magnitude of the velocity vector at various points along the swing.