Strand:
Energy and Forces
Strand
Unit: Forces (air)
1. We considered
whether air is strong.
2. Many children
posited that moving air is strong as evidenced by the recent storms
3. We thought we
might see could we prove this in the classroom
4. Then we might
look at whether still air is strong.
Experiment
1: Is moving air strong?
Equipment; A hairdryer and a
ping pong ball.
Children predicted whether the
moving air from the hairdryer might be able to hold up a light ball. Some
children thought it would, others thought it might fall off the air column.
So
we tried it... see photos and the moving air was able to hold up a table tennis
ball weighing 2.7g.
Equipment: A table and 8
balloons.
We turned a table upside down
and placed 8 balloons under it.
The children predicted that if
a child walked across the upturned table that the balloons would cetainly
burst. So we tried it! The balloons were able to hold up the weight of the
children. Still air is strong. Each child took a turn walking over the table.
We
found out that the average weight of a 7 year old is about 22 kg. We worked out
that each balloon could support almost 3kg of weight.
Then
we thought of practical applications of this ability of air to be strong and we
thought of air beds and tyres.
Who
knew air could be such fun!
