Wednesday 27 November 2013

A Day of Inquiry - Exploring Force and Motion

Today after gym we met as a group and talked about our wonders around force and motion.  Ms. Lirenman set up a Padlet for us to add our wonders too.  For those of us who could do it independently we tried to use a QR code to get into the Padlet.  Unfortunately we had some internet troubles.   In the end we were able to create this Padlet with our wonders.  



Many of us were curious how a Bey Blades worked and so Ms. Lirenman brought out her Hanukkah Driedels. We made them spin and figured out that we had to push the "handle" at the  top to make them spin.

We then talked about pushing vs pulling. We looked at a cool force and motion book and we tried to figure out what we could push or pull.

After recess we headed outside to discover a bit more about push and pull.  We explored our playground equipment a bit looking for places where we push, and where we pull.  Can you see where we are pushing and where we are pulling?





From the playground we moved over to the gravel field to explore some more.  We tried out a few activities to see what else we could discover about push and pull forces.  We experimented with light, medium, and strong forces and how those changes affected things.  Here are some of the things we experimented with.  Do you know if they required a push force or a pull force or both?






While eating lunch many of us noticed that we push and pull things when we eat.  This student figured out that when she brings her spoon of food to her mouth that she's pulling on the spoon.  Many other students had similar discoveries.


Once lunch was over we talked  more about push and pull forces and we looked closely at friction.  We learned that friction can cause heat (try rubbing your hands together really quickly) and that some times we want friction (like when we need to stop quickly) and other times we don't want friction (like when we are trying to get to the net quickly to score a goal in ice hockey).  We experimented with cars on different surfaces.



Once we had a better understanding of friction we used a ramp with a variety of surfaces on it to see if it made a difference.  We learned a few new things in the process.

We ended our day of inquiry by creating another Padlet.  As you can see by the Padlet below we learned a lot today.  


Have you ever spent a day looking at just one topic? Ms. Lirenman says we get to do it again next Wednesday too.  What a wonderful way for us to learn.

1 comment:

  1. What a lovely and exciting way to learn about "push and pull" .
    Most mornings I start the day by pulling my daughter out of bed !
    From a mum.

    ReplyDelete

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