David, Jett, and Sartaj Papa Smurf Project

Here is a project we did for math. Our project was if we could get a smurf to land on a mattress. These are the steps that we took to make this project happen.


Step 1- Define Sliders


We created our sliders for cannon angle, mattress height, mattress distance, time, smurf speed. Since our equations had to be universal instead of using numbers we used variables. An example of our time slider or our abbreviation "t0" is {t0 (-sin(angle) velocity - sqrt((sin(angle) velocity)² - 64 (height + 30))) / -32}


Step 2- Defining Point "S"


We created a point and named it s. S would be the point be defined by the falling object equation and the time equation. This made point s move with the slider in a parabolic form moving with time.



Step 3- Stopping Papa Smurf



One major thing we wanted to do was make Papa Smurf stop a our mattress height. To do this we used the falling/rising object equation and solved it using variables. Our equation looked like this 0= -16sin (a)^2+v sin (a)+h+30/32.



Step 4- Telling Papa Smurf he was on the Mattress/Text



Now that Papa Smurf was landing on a point we needed him to land on the mattress. We did this by making two points and telling the computer that if Papa Smurf was between these two points and time equaled one, a text would appear saying "Congratulations, You're Not Dead!"



With all this information we were able to make a smurf shoot out of a cannon, control the distance and the height of the mattress, control the speed of the smurf, and achieve the overall goal of landing the smurf on the mattress.

From this project we learned that it may not look like we know how to do these hard tasks, but if we really think about the skills and rules we know about math we can do a lot of cool things. We really enjoyed this project and hope other kids from other school can have this opportunity too.



-David, Jett, Sartaj