Paper Airplane - The Experiment

Today, after our prep work, we let the airplanes fly! To review, we are testing which paper makes the best paper airplane: tissue, cardstock, construction, copy, and notebook. The students took their place and let them fly!

 

 

 

 

Copy paper (up to 17 ft) squeaked out a win over cardstock (up to 14 ft) with tissue paper barely going anywhere (1 ft).

Paper Airplane - Prep Work

Today, we prepared for our Paper Airplane experiment! We are testing which paper will make the best paper airplane. The types of paper we are testing are: tissue, cardstock, construction, copy, and notebook. Because we are only testing the type of paper, all our planes HAD to be made the exact same way.

After our experiment, the students will be able to make any type of plane they want and we will test that :)

 

 

 

Viscosity - Speed of Liquids

After learning about velocity and friction, we decided to tackle viscosity, the speed of a liquid. This was a new science vocabulary word for me this school year! The students were asked to predict which liquids would move the fastest and slowest.

We compared honey, milk, liquid glue, orange juice, paint, veggie oil, chocolate syrup, and ketchup. Most students predicted honey or ketchup to be the slowest and milk to be the quickest liquid. We placed each liquid in a circle and raised the paper to completely vertical to see which would move the fastest toward the "finish line". Four students helped to time the liquids, each was in charge of a certain liquid and had to report to the class its time.

Ketchup was definitely the slowest liquid, we gave it four minutes twice and eight minutes once and it only made it halfway down the track.. And orange juice was the fastest, we timed it at 1 second each time.

Forces and Motion - Experiments

Now that my students understand Newton's 3 Laws of Motion, it's time to experiment! Here are two great experiments for motion:

Friction Lab
I found this experiment on TpT. Amanda Leiter's FREEBIE experiment asks students to measure how far toy cars travel as they move down ramps made of different materials. We created ramps from carpet, crinkled foil, wax paper, sand paper, and bubble wrap. Before we started the cars, each student predicted which material would have the least friction.The students started each car at the top of the ramps and measured how far the cars traveled from the ramps.

 

 

 

Action to Reaction

 

Up next, our Paper Airplane Experiment!

Forces & Motion - An Explanation

Motion is all around us. We don't really notice it unless we stop and think about it. And Newton's 3 Laws of Motion control so much of our lives!

Our students have studied Motion in previous grades and we wanted to ramp up our Forces and Motion unit this year. To introduce the unit, we went on a Motion Hunt around our school. We made a T-Chart of things we use push and pull to move. Obviously, 3rd graders know what push and pull are and we want to challenge them in their understanding of science.

Next, we discussed Isaac Newton's 3 Laws of Motion. I used George Power's FREEBIE TpT ppt to help explain the Laws. We went through example of each Law.

First Law of Motion: An object at rest will stay a rest and an object in motion will stay in motion unless acted on by an outside force. This is sometimes called The Seatbelt Law. When you are in a car, moving at 35 mph, your body is also moving at 35 mph. If the car comes to a sudden stop, your body wants to stay in motion and will continue moving forward. The outside force (the seatbelt) stops your body and saves you from being hurt. Another example is a soccer ball kicked at recess, it will continue moving at a constant velocity (speed) until acted on/slowed down and stopped by the ground or grass (friction).

Second Law of Motion: Mass x Acceleration = Force  Basically, it takes more speed to move objects with more mass and less speed to move objects with less mass. For example, if you throw a bowling ball and a basketball (roughly the same size), the basketball will go farther because there is less mass weighing it down.

Third Law of Motion: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. When I sit in a chair, my force is pushing down on the seat (action) and the seat is pushing up on me (opposite action). For me to rest on the chair, those forces must be equal. If my force was greater than the chair's, it would break and I would fall. If the chair's force was greater than mine, I would float off the chair. One of my students asked about a beanbag chair, and I thought that was a great example of a chair with less force (since you sink into the chair as you sit).