This lab is an inquiry activity in that students will likely not know which direction the marble will travel and will discover it with some guidance. It also reinforces the method of preparing a hypothesis before performing an inquiry activity. Although it is OK for students to learn about centripetal force as the force that keeps an object traveling in a circle, and to do centripetal force calculations before this lab, teachers should avoid talking about the path of the object before students perform this activity to keep it from becoming a verification lab.