Simple Machine Experiments

I'm trying to make a point to include at least one hands-on activity with every Five in a Row unit we do.

For example, when we did How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World, we baked ... well, actually we baked apple crisp. Mostly because Robert loves apple crisp, but does not like apple pie.

And then when we did Madeline, the girls made an Eiffel Tower out of Legos.

Well, a couple weeks ago we did a book called Who Owns the Sun?



What was really cool about this book is that it was written and illustrated by a fourteen year old girl -- m0re specifically, it was written by a fourteen year girl who was attending my high school at the time. [My first one, in Pittsburgh.]

I looked her up and dropped her an e-mail. She is about 3-4 years younger then me. She also attended my middle school, and from what she described, it sounds like she lived about a 20-minute walk from my house.

And interestingly, she has an older brother -- who is a year younger than me -- who is on Wiki as "an American novelist."

And I thought I was cool because I won a couple writing contests when I was a teenager. Um, no.

Anyway, back to the hands-on activities before I get too depressed.

One of the FIAR topics for this book is simple machines, so the girls and I did some of the interactive games on this site.

We also did some Simple Machines experiments.


They dropped at egg into a pan to see if it would crack ...
(this probably would have been more effective with raw eggs, but everyone wanted to eat them afterwards)


... and then dropped it from the same height using a inclined plane.


They arranged blocks on a lever and saw how the balancing changed if they moved the fulcrum.


And they saw how lifting something with a lever ...



... was easier than lifting something without it.