While I’ve been blogging about math resources this week, the kids have been studying Newton’s Laws of Motion. I had a full week of it planned, but I had to reconsider my schedule after Ian became inspired to write a new composition, this time for a chamber orchestra with synth and a drum kit. He was so on fire that I had to squash my science lessons to bookend the week, leaving Wednesday and Thursday open for creative pursuits.
While Ian was composing (and he finished his lovely song by the way, in just three days!), Eva struck out into the land of filmmaking, creating a couple of silly episodes of “Kinzy’s Cooking Show.” Kinzy is the main character of the book she’ll be releasing this May, and she wants to build a whole world up around him. We built a set complete with stage lights and backdrop, filmed the clips, and I taught her how to upload them to youtube and from there drop them into her website. She gave her website a new look (and so, you may have noticed, did I), and all in all we had a good time. You can click on the link above to see them all, or just get a flavor right here. This is episode #1.
But back to physics. Our textbook choice this week was the very scientific Zombies and Forces and Motion by Mark Weakland. On the first day, we talked about Newton’s first law: things at rest stay at rest, and things in motion stay in motion. To visually explore this law (besides looking at the hilarious illustrations in our text), we balanced a stuffed animal on a toy car and observed its forward motion when the car smashed into a conspicuous wall – lots of fun there. We flicked index cards out from under balls and watched them fall straight down as the cards went sailing forward. We drug blocks on various surfaces and discussed friction. We played air hockey at the university to observe what happens when you remove this friction.
But the best thing we did was this:
I should add that Eva did this successfully as well. And of course we had some unsuccessful tries too, with mostly full cups of water. That was fun. And wet.
Happy Friday, everyone. See you next week!
so fun!