Sunday, November 21, 2010

SocCourt as a myth?

SocCourt is my favorite sport. I play with one friend at least once a week and I've gotten good enough now that I feel safe in offering extra credit to students who can beat me.  This semester no students have even scored a point yet (that's through six games so far) but they're motivated because I say that if a student beats me the whole class gets extra points.

In my "Hamline Mythbusters" class recently it was time to vote on what the full-class myth to bust would be.  This was after they'd already worked, in groups, on five different myths and they were wanting to all work together for the second go round (soon I'll post the YouTube videos of the five myths).   One student said it would be fun to bust the myth that SuperFly can't be beat.  At first we all laughed but it ended up being a lot of fun brainstorming how it could be done.  We realized that there was a lot of science that could be done including angle of reflection with spin, accuracy needed for controlled juggling, speed of ball necessary to break a light (this has, ahem, been done once already), and on and on.  We also realized that it would be fun to have some people investigate the value of trash talking (some would say I'm good at lots of things but awesome at that).  And of course, I'd be able to play lots and lots of SocCourt.

Alas, it got voted down.  Instead my students are working on the best way to lift someone with balloons. Some students are investigating the lift and leaking qualities of various gases.  Others are determining the best way to attach all the balloons.  Still others are working out the issues regarding weather (rain, wind, etc).  It'll be fun, sure, especially with the high speed cameras capturing things like balloons popping when filled too much, but it's sure too bad that I can't whup up on some poor students in the SocCourt court.

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