This upcoming year, I will be teaching MDM
4U for the first time in quite a while. My ultimate goal is to have students
explore most of the concepts through activities before practicing key skills.
After perusing the textbook and doing a
quick Internet search, I came up with the idea of building my own Plinko Board
to help with some of the probability concepts. This became one of my summer
projects.
What you will need (see below for a photo of the final product):
·
2’ by 4’ sheet of peg board
·
2’ by 4’ sheet of plywood
·
5/16th dowels
o
We purchased 3 feet long dowels
and cut them into 3’’ pieces. I did see you could have bought craft dowels that
were precut and about the same size.
o
My board has a total of 300
dowels (216 (18 x 12) white dowels and 84 (7 x 12) black dowels).
·
Wood glue
·
1/2’’ plywood cut 3.5’’ wide
for the sides and bottom edges
·
2 hinges to secure the stand
·
stand (2x3’s)
·
hooks to secure the stand when
in use
·
ribbon (to create the zig zag
walls)
o
I sized out how much ribbon I
needed and then sewed loops at each end. I then slipped one loop at one end
over a peg in the first row and then looped it down along the sides and slipped
the other loop on the last peg in the last row. This was done on both sides.
·
paint
Every summer, I spend a few weeks up in
Northern Ontario visiting my parents and I am very fortunate to have a retired
father with a creative mind and a workshop that he lets me invade over the
summer for a project or two. One of the first days that I was home, I was
watching “The Price is Right” with my dad after lunch and I said “Dad, I am
going to build a Plinko Board this summer. You can do it using peg board and
some dowels.” This now became a joint project – me for education purposes and
my dad for interest sake.
Disclaimer: my dad did the building of the
board and I did most of the aesthetics of the board. My dad is great at being
given a description and he magically creates the idea with the materials he has
lying around his workshop. So I know what materials were used but have little
details to provide on how all the materials came together (especially with the
stand – it seem to magically appear over night and I have no idea how it was
created).
Some things I did note during the building
process was that it is a great idea to paint the board and the pegs before it
is all put together. Also, you will need
to create a barrier along the sides so that the chip doesn’t get stuck in the
sides. My first thought was to use elastics but could not find elastics that
were wide enough. My final decision was to use ribbon. See the list of
materials for more details on how I put that together.
I decided to leave the bottom values blank
so that I could adjust them as I saw fit. My idea is to begin the highest score
in the middle of the board and working outwards. I would create small paper
slips that I would place at the bottom and could replace if need be.
It was now play time and after some trial
and error it was discovered a single poker chip was a bit too light and
sometimes stopped along the drop. The weight of 2 poker chips seemed like a
better tool to drop. I also found foam golf balls and they seem to work the
best – they did not get stuck along the way. My current thought is to have a
few different items to use to drop in my class.
My thought at the moment is to have the
board in my class and use a few minutes each class for the first few weeks to
collect data. I would have the students play and record their result on a
common chart. They would keep track of what location they dropped from and
where it landed. We would then use this data to drive the discussion in a
future lesson.
Stay tuned for how this all unfolds in my
class in the upcoming school year.
