Summer SAVY 2023 Session 1, Day 4 – Creative Contraptions (Kent)
Day 4: Our review of forces today led us to discussions about gravity. We experimented with a contraption that appeared to defy the Laws of gravity but actually explains how the balance point is aided by the addition of weight below the point of balance.
We then focused on motion and learned about Newton’s Laws of Motion. We especially concentrated on the First Law of Motion, which led to experimenting with inertia. Much excitement ensued with the students’ designing of spinning tops to demonstrate rotational inertia.
Students then worked on a creative contraption to solve a given problem of moving a ball to an allocated place with only the use of simple machines.
Questions to ask at dinnertime:
- Why does your popsicle stick and pipe cleaner contraption stay upright when you attach the clothes pins to the bottom of the pipe cleaner?
- When do you experience inertia?
- How did you design your spinning top to demonstrate rotational inertia?
- What are your plans to move the ball up onto the table and then along to the other side using simple machines?
I look forward to seeing these creative minds in action as they explain their final contraptions tomorrow,
Jacquie Kent