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Monday, May 16, 2016

Forms of Energy

As we discussed different forms of energy, (we focused on Mechanical, Sound, Electrical, Light/Solar, and Heat/Thermal) we decided to make a foldable to hold all of our information. Inside we put the definition of the form of energy, and on the outside we added a picture example as well. Here is an example of our foldable - one picture is the outside view and the other picture is inside the flaps.

Thursday, May 5, 2016

Fighting a Dragon with a Cannonball!


About to release marble from 4 cm
Yesterday we fought dragons with cannonballs! The children built ramps using a ruler and a Styrofoam cup. They placed a paper dragon in front of the ruler, and started their "cannonball" at differing spots on the ruler to see the results. They placed the cannonball at 4cm,8cm, 12cm, 16cm, 20cm, 24cm, and 28cm. The distance the dragon was pushed was documented, averaged, then graphed.

After the marble was released from 4cm














About to release marble from 12cm

Table of our results
Graph of our results

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Force








Lately we've been working with three types of force: gravity, friction, and magnetism. We started an investigation in which we made three pendulums of different lengths. We timed how long each pendulum took to make 10 swings, then looked at our pattern. For our pendulum with a string 10cm long, it took 5 seconds to swing 10 times. For our pendulum with a string of 20cm long, it took 6 seconds. Our pendulum with a string of 30cm long took 7 seconds to swing 10 times. We then predicted how long it would take a pendulum with strings of 40cm and 50cm to swing 10 times.

We discussed the forces involved in our experiment. We talked about the gravitational pull, which was responsible for making our pendulum fall. We also discussed the friction of the air rubbing against the string, which was responsible for slowing down the pendulum to an eventual stop. There is also friction found in the string rubbing against the pencil. This, too, helps slow our pendulum's swing.