January 3, 2012 Science News

Written by Miss Karen McCloy - Science Teacher

Tuesday, January 03, 2012

Deer Park Shore Parents,

Hello again from the Park Shore Science room! I just wanted to update you on what we’ve been up to lately.
In the months of November and December, we touched upon a number of fun and interesting topics. I decided to bring a little physics into the classroom and introduce the children to Sir Isaac Newton and his First Law of Motion which states, in part, that a body at rest will stay at rest unless acted on by an outside force. This is also known as the Law of Inertia. We demonstrated this law in a number of different ways. First was our egg drop experiment and I am proud to say that we had very few egg casualties! Ask your child what happened during this experiment. Second, the children attempted to get a penny to fall into a cup by quickly pulling away a paper ring that the penny was resting upon. Quite a few children became proficient at this task. Lastly, the children tried out my tennis ball headgear which rested on their heads with tennis balls hanging over each side. As they turned to look from one tennis ball to another, they moved but the balls stayed where they were. We laughed quite a bit as we all looked a little like aliens with the headgear on!

Another topic that we talked about was air and air pressure as well as Bernoulli’s Principle which explains how airplanes stay up in the air. With a hair dryer and ping pong balls we learned that moving air has lower pressure than air that is still. The shape of an airplane’s wing creates faster moving air on top of the wing making the pressure above the wing lower than that beneath the wing. This, in turn provides “lift” which keeps the airplane in the air. We did a number of demonstrations of this principle including “kissing balloons” and the “collapsing bridge”. We also demonstrated how a jet engine works by letting air out of a balloon and letting it fly across the room attached to string by a straw. The children were on the receiving end of this string and experienced Newton’s Third Law of Motion which states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Our next topic was weights and balances. We set up a see-saw type balance and compared what it would be like if the children were to see-saw with a parent or with a child their size. They realized that weight needs to be equal on both sides in order to balance. We learned that the triangle shaped object under the balance is called a fulcrum and that the position of the fulcrum is very important because moving it changes the center of gravity. We demonstrated this by counting how many marbles it took to raise a ball of clay with the fulcrum in different positions and found that the farther the fulcrum was from the clay, the more marbles it took to lift it. The children also each had the opportunity to try to balance a hanging scale with pennies.
These last two weeks before the break, we began talking about crystals and did a few activities including crystal painting on black paper with a saturated Epsom salt solution. We also worked on our borax crystal ornaments which came out absolutely beautiful and were sent home with all the children. Lastly we set up a Magic Crystal Tree experiment which takes overnight to complete so I asked the children to hypothesize what they thought might happen and then to observe with their eyes what actually happened the next morning at school. Ask them what the results were and if their hypotheses were correct!
I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a happy, safe and healthy holiday. I look forward to more discoveries with your children in 2012. Happy New Year!!

Sincerely,

Miss Karen
Karen McCloy
Science Teacher

Bob & Chuck
Bob & Chuck Budah
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January 3, 2012 Science News

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