Projectile Motion: 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 Projectile Motion 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 with the Projectile Motion sim.
- Take a snapshot after changing the initial conditions and predict how the new conditions will affect the path of the projectile. Explain your reasoning.
- Take a snapshot of the sim with the air resistance turned on. Identify which factors affect the range of the projectile when air resistance is on, but have no affect when air resistance is turned off.
- Take a snapshot during game play and explain why the black dots on the projectile’s path are closer together near the top, but further apart when close to the ground.
