 | Students will collect data from actual skid marks and determine the initial velocity of the vehicle that made them. These tire marks might be created on the school parking lot with the assistance of an accident reconstructionist from the local police department. The students will work in small lab groups while investigating the tire marks and then create an Excel spreadsheet/graph to analyze the data collected from these tire marks. |
Each group will present their conclusions to the class. The class will then discuss each group’s findings and come to a consensus regarding a reasonable result. The class consensus may in turn be presented to the accident reconstructionist who created the tire marks for a final authentic assessment of their work.
| Students will prepare a report in which they describe and explain the relationships between the different variables in the simulation. The report may be expanded to include more information about the physics of accident reconstruction. |