Using Tennis Balls to Study Angles

The 6th Hour and 8th Hour classes have been rolling tennis balls down the hallway all in the name of science.  On one end of the hall, the students rolled tennis balls down a long cardboard tube towards a target.  The target was a meter stick lying on edge so that it fell over when a ball rolled into it.  This meter stick was first placed perpendicular to the path of the rolling tennis balls.  We called that the zero degree setup.  After students rolled 30 tennis balls at the target, we changed the meter stick so that it was angled 40 degrees from the original.  Our last set of trials was at 80 degrees.  Afterwards, we discussed the effect of the angle of sunlight on temperatures on the Earth.  We also applied what we learned to the changing of the seasons.  Stay tuned for individual reports on our experiment and our conclusions.