Orbits and Rotation
Fifth grade Physics lesson
Liaison:
Date:
Group Members: David Kuo and Amy Wang
School: Agassiz
Teacher: Karrie Hart
Materials:
Washers
4" plastic tubes
string
stopwatch
swivel chair
Procedure:
We tried to explain how the size of the orbits of the planets would affect
the rate at which the planets traveled around the sun. We had kids guess
which planets had the shortest orbits and then had them guess the reasons
why they had such short or long orbits.
The actual procedure requires constant supervision and probably shouldn't
be done with kids any younger than fifth grade, as it involves spinning
washers around on a string.
1) We gave each group several washers, a piece of string, and a plastic tube.
2) The groups put the string through the plastic tube and then tied a certain
number of washers onto each end of the string (a different number on each side).
3) The whole apparatus was picked up by the plastic tube and the side of the
string with the greater number of washers was allowed to fall until the other
side was snug against the plastic tube.
4) We asked the kids to then spin the side with the smaller number of washers
over their head at a steady rate (where the string no longer moved up or down)
5) They then counted the number of revolutions per 30 seconds.
6) The radius of the spin was recorded along with the number of washers and
number of revolutions.
Evaluation:
We asked them to try and come up with correlations about the data.
The conclusions the class reached as a whole were recorded into individual
science notebooks.
Comments:
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