SKILLS
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What Should I Measure?

The manager or the Chicago Cubs has asked you to find out which travel farther after they are hit by a bat, cold baseballs or warm baseballs.

How can you use the listed materials to answer that question?

First decide what needs to be measured and how you can gather all the data you need.

Here are some things to keep in mind as you plan:

  • To conduct the experiment efficiently, people need to be assigned jobs to do. Some of the jobs are obvious (batter, pitcher, catcher, outfielders). Other jobs are less obvious. Think about what other jobs can be assigned to make everything run smoothly.
  • Marking off the field in some way will make measuring the flight of each hit go faster.
  • Keep the cold baseballs in a container with ice but don't let them get wet.
  • Keeping the batter from knowing the temperature of the ball should be easy.
  • Keeping the pitcher from telling a warm ball from a cold ball is almost impossible.

Ice Chest
Ice Chest

How could you use a batting tee to make this a double-blind experiment?


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