Creating a variable moment of inertia device for physics labs

Over the past 10 years, the physics education community has been calling for a change in college physics labs to make them less prescriptive and formulaic. The goal is to move to "inquiry based" labs, in which students have more agency to explore the concepts, make mistakes, and improve upon the design and analysis of the lab. One approach is to develop labs in which the instructor does not know the answer so that students are forced to think more independently about measurement. In the summer of 2023, we decided to build a lab that explores moments of inertia using these concepts. We designed and 3D printed a lab component that allows us to change the mass distribution while keeping the overall dimensions and total mass the same. This allows us to produce two components that are identical in all simple measurements, requiring the students to think deeply about how to make their measurements in such a way as they can tell whether or not the cylinders have different moments of inertia or not. We are testing this approach with Siena students to understand if or how it contributes to the learning process. The current status of this project will be presented.