Physics Phun

So I thought I would write about some of the other activities we have done for Phantastic Physics Phriday.

One of our first challenges was to move a playing card the farthest distance without direct contact.

The rules were as follows:

• You can not touch or blow on the card
• You can not change the card itself other than to add things to it (no cutting, tearing, bending, etc.)
• You can build a device to move the card, but it can not be in constant contact with both you and the card (you can't just push it along the floor with a stick)
• You can not simply drop the card from a high location and count the fall as your movement.
• You can launch your card with some device and count its trajectory as movement.
• If you aren't sure if something is allowed, ask your teacher

The students worked in teams of 2 and were given about 25 minutes and access to materials such as balloons, straws, tape, string, rulers, bouncy balls, marbles, scissors, and other things that they asked for.

Students came up with a huge number of possibilities.

One team made a simple catapult but they were disqualified when their playing card (attached to a marble to add weight) ended up on the roof of the school.

Another team ran a length of string from one corner of the room to the other and attached a balloon to the playing card and a piece of straw to the other side of the balloon. They ran the string through the straw then blew up the balloon and let go, using the balloon to propel the contraption along the string.

A third team used a similar idea, attaching the card and some wings to a balloon before blowing it up and letting it go.

The winning team moved their card all the way down the hallway, about 5 or 6 times farther than any other team. They took 4 balloons (one for each hand of each partner) and taped a section of straw into the mouth of each one. Then they blew up all four balloons and held them closed. They put the card on the floor and used one balloon at a time to blow the card down the hallway. They aimed the mouth of the straws underneath the edge of the card so that it glided like a hover-craft.

It's pretty exciting what students can come up with when given a challenge and freedom to explore their own ideas.