On Sept. 18, Raji Swaminathan’s Gr. 7 science students performed an experiment in speed, velocity and motion, and also studied Newton’s laws of motion. “This lab helps students to investigate motion such as walking at a constant velocity away or towards a sensor, speeding up or slowing down and standing at rest,” Swaminathan said. “They use a Vernier motion detector and LoggerPro software to achieve this.” Students first made a prediction of different types of motion graphically and tried to simulate their predictions on the computer and see how closely they matched. “This lab helps them to understand that on a position-versus-time graph, a straight line going up or down represents constant velocity, a horizontal line is when a student is at rest and a curve represents changing speed.” The students also learned that walking more quickly creates a steeper slope on the graph, which helps them to understand that the slope of the position-versus-time graph indicates speed.