dWelcome and congrats to the many 3rd graders who joined us since the 3rd quarter. Lots of enthusiastic new faces injected new energy into the teams. As pictured in the previous post, the first project we did 3rd quarter was designing and building a green house. We also learned about the complex greenhouse effect. The teams got a chance to run outdoors to test the drastic change in temperature in their various designs and were excited to take them home to grow their own flower/veggie/herb in the newly minted greenhouses.
Next up the teams got to brainstorm the best roller coaster ride they have ever been on and what would they do if they were tasked to build a roller coaster of their dreams. Obviously, the speed, the turns, the big dips, the lighting, the water features, and the 360 turns were all mentioned at the top of everyone's list. But in order to build one out of recycled materials takes quite a bit of patience, trial and error, and applying the physics concepts we learned this year. The students were super proud of their creations and it was nice to see a bit of bickering over who ultimately gets to take their creations home!
Then, we took it to the stars for our next big segment. This segment is all about our solar system and parachutes! I divided up the class into 7 teams and each team is assigned a planet. They are responsible for learning all about their planet's attributes and most importantly, the gravity and atmosphere on each planet. Then, we learned about the gravity on our home planet and that falling objects travel at the speed of 9.8 meters per second. Using that as a base, each team needed to design and create a parachute that can successfully land and/or drop a payload successfully on each of their own planets. This was obviously very tricky for the gas planets and each team took the initiative of testing and redesigning to slow down or increase the speed of their parachutes. They were also experimenting with which material worked best at the speed they wanted their parachutes to fall - should they use mesh, fabric, plastic or a combination? The teams had an amazing time when they tested their parachutes. We even saw wild designs that looked like jellyfishes!
Next up the teams got to brainstorm the best roller coaster ride they have ever been on and what would they do if they were tasked to build a roller coaster of their dreams. Obviously, the speed, the turns, the big dips, the lighting, the water features, and the 360 turns were all mentioned at the top of everyone's list. But in order to build one out of recycled materials takes quite a bit of patience, trial and error, and applying the physics concepts we learned this year. The students were super proud of their creations and it was nice to see a bit of bickering over who ultimately gets to take their creations home!
Then, we took it to the stars for our next big segment. This segment is all about our solar system and parachutes! I divided up the class into 7 teams and each team is assigned a planet. They are responsible for learning all about their planet's attributes and most importantly, the gravity and atmosphere on each planet. Then, we learned about the gravity on our home planet and that falling objects travel at the speed of 9.8 meters per second. Using that as a base, each team needed to design and create a parachute that can successfully land and/or drop a payload successfully on each of their own planets. This was obviously very tricky for the gas planets and each team took the initiative of testing and redesigning to slow down or increase the speed of their parachutes. They were also experimenting with which material worked best at the speed they wanted their parachutes to fall - should they use mesh, fabric, plastic or a combination? The teams had an amazing time when they tested their parachutes. We even saw wild designs that looked like jellyfishes!