Look for: The claim should state something like “When m…

3.A Engage in argument from evidence to support or refute our predictions about whether all solid objects vibrate (cause) when they make sounds (effect), even when we cannot see them vibrate.

The claim should state something like “When more force is applied to an object, it causes bigger vibrations and therefore louder sounds.”

Evidence includes observations of the speaker’s wider vibration blur when it was playing a louder sound and/or observations from day 1 that the louder drum strike moved the laser more than the soft one and/or that the larger rock dropped on the table caused the laser to move more than the smaller rock.

The reasoning concludes that a bigger force on an object causes the object to move back and forth/vibrate more (or bigger). When that happens more energy is being transferred. This means that louder sounds move more and have more energy than softer sounds.

At the end of day 2, collect the handouts as a formative assessment. If students’ claims, evidence, and/or reasoning do not meet your expectations on this handout, consider looking at their Progress Trackers as well. It may be that they did not put all the pieces together on their own, but after the discussion they understood the content of the lesson. If their Progress Trackers show good understanding of the lesson’s key ideas, provide more guidance to these students next time they are using evidence to support a claim. If the Progress Trackers do not show good understanding of this lesson’s key ideas, those students should be front-and-center helping lead the investigation in Lesson 4. In addition, if students did not add energy transfer into their reasoning (as mentioned above), plan to revisit the reasoning discussion during the next class.

If students are struggling to make the claim in part 4, direct them to write their evidence first, and consider offering sentence starters for the evidence section, such as, “When the speaker was _____, we saw the laser move ______. When we hit the drum harder, we saw the laser ______. When we dropped a bigger rock, the laser ______.” Then ask, So what can we claim about what causes louder sounds?

If students are struggling with reasoning on part 4 of the handout, remind them of the patterns they noticed when investigating the instruments. You might ask, If you wanted to make the drum or guitar sound louder, what did you have to do? What was the difference in what we could see on the video of the drum or with the laser when the sound was softer versus louder? What happened to cause that difference? Then connect this back to the Collisions Unit and the relationship between a force that deforms an object and energy; you might ask, What happens when a force contacts an object? What do you think is happening with the energy when the rock hits the table or the stick hits the drum?