Just click on the green flag and note that it takes both a 'rotation' and 'translation' to roll the wagon wheel left to right. On the science side,for a circular disc rolling down an inclined plane, about 33% of the gravitational potential energy is used to rotate the disc and 67% of the energy to translate the disc.
I am working on a set of math/science/programming activities for middle school students called 'Where Math and Science Meet'. The implication being that 'programming' is one point of intersection. The goal of the set of materials is to help middle school math and science teachers understand and appreciate the value of teaching basic programming skills -using Scratch- to students. The middle school common core math standards for geometry include the transformations rotation, translation, refletion, and dilation. This Scratch project focuses on the rotation and translation transformations. A wheel rolling along a line combines the rotation and translation transformations.
