Skills for Science - Recording data - Measuring reaction time

Ruler-drop reaction-time experiment. For KS3 groups to get comfortable with predicting, recording, and analysing results right at the start of the year.

Pupils begin by trying the drop-and-catch with a partner and predicting which hand will react faster, then follow a short demo and five-step method to run five trials per hand, recording their distances in a results table and calculating a mean. The class then pools everyone’s data on the board, which makes trends and anomalous results properly visible, and pupils use sentence stems to judge how accurate their prediction was, describe the class-wide trend, and flag anomalies.