Science in the Library

For today's Curiosity Machine classes, our last meeting of the four-week session, we did an exciting project from the Curiosity Machine website: balloon helicopters ! We learned about different kinds of energy, particularly elastic potential energy. Elastic potential energy is the potential energy stored when you bend, stretch or deform an object, and that energy converts to kinetic energy as the object bounces back. Here's a great website that explains it pretty well: Physics 20 Project . We discussed examples of elastic potential energy using a Family Feud presentation I made on Scratch. You can click on the image below to see the project, though it's supposed to be used as a tool for discussion: The project itself was challenging and I'm glad I worked on my sample ahead of time. But it's so exciting to see those balloons fly! First, you have to cut a boba straw to about the same length as the rubber band you plan to use (when it's at equilibriu...

This summer I tried a new science workshop at the Pasadena Central Library, for tweens ages 9 and up, using the website http://www.curiositymachine.org . This is a great website for librarians, teachers and homeschooling parents, with its collection of projects, how-to videos, and opportunities for children to interact with scientists and get feedback on their projects. Free science classes are definitely in high demand, and even after I split it up into two classes the spots filled up right away! We started each class learning about some science concept and then applying what we learned to a hands-on challenge. We learned about Newton’s laws of motion, tessellations, the aerodynamics of bird flight, and simple machines. We: Shot stomp rockets, Made bird wings that could be flapped hard enough to rotate us around in an office chair, Engineered honeycomb structures strong enough to hold a stack of dictionaries, And designed sharp levers for picking up and breaking e...