Exploration of Reaction Time: Ideas for an Inquiry Investigation in Physics Education

Reaction time, the time between a stimulus and a person's reaction to it, is a concept familiar to most teenagers, particularly in the context of driving. We describe a simple inexpensive activity that utilizes students’ creativity and invokes the scientific method in order to explore reaction time. The goal of the activity is to give students a realistic understanding of their reaction time and to challenge them to consider the implications of this for driving scenarios.