Don't Lose Your Marbles Over Potential and Kinetic Energy

There is a great teachengineering.com activity that reinforces the learning about potential and kinetic engineering.  In it, the students use a 6 foot section of pipe insulation cut in half to build roller coasters.  It is a great way to get them to begin to understand how mass, gravity, force, Newton's Laws and Potential and Kinetic energy work on a physical level.

Educational research shows that if you read about a topic you retain about 10%, if you only listen to a lecture about a topic you retain about 25%, 30% retention if you see the topic demonstrated, if you see and hear you retain about 50%, and if you see, hear, and repeat you retain about 70%.  However, if you see, hear, repeat or say something about the topic and use the ideas, you will retain about 90% of the ideas.  I am hoping that all the 4th graders at this school will now remember potential and kinetic energy.

In this activity, the students build roller coasters and use a marble to run down the track and try to get the marble in a cup.  They get various points for different design characteristics, which include: 90 degree turn, 180 degree turn, 270 degree turn, a loop, and a corkscrew.  The students quickly learn that the corkscrew is the most challenging, followed by a large loop.  Small loops are easy and can be combined with other attributes such as a 180 degree turn.  As an added challenge, they had to use different marbles with different masses, a glass marble weighing 3.5 grams and a steel marble weighing 7.5 grams.

Here are just a few of the designs they produced.

A loop d' loop.

Corkscrew with a loop

Loop with 180 degree turn

Another double loop

Brush Bots 2014

I taught another after school class for fourth and fifth graders with brushbots again this year.  The kids really seem to enjoy making them.  We had a few issues with defective parts this year, although in some ways that is okay.  The kids learn how to debug the circuit when things don't work as anticipated.

If you haven't made these before, brush bots are a lot of fun to make and pretty easy.

  First of all  you need a motor, DC 1.5-3 volt with leads attached or a spot to attach wires.   You will also need a way to unbalance the motor, and here I have used an alligator clip.  There is a chance that the clip will fly off and could potentially hit someone, but we haven't really had problems with that.

I like to wire in a switch so you don't have to pull the battery to get the brushbot to stop.  Here I have a slide switch, but  I have to say I like the toggle switches better.

Finally, you will need a power source, a AA battery and a holder.  The holder enables the student to change the battery themselves and keep their brushbot in working order.

The parts that I have links to have worked pretty well with no real  issues.  I did order some directly from China from another distributor, and I have had several of the parts not work.  

I have the kids wire these circuits themselves and use electrical tape to keep everything together.  I don't think turning fourth graders loose with a soldering iron is all that smart.  I have enough trouble with glue guns!

Now, you just need to mount the circuit onto a brush, and let them go.  Initially, I have the kids tape them onto the brushes and move the components around until they move they way they want them to.  Then, it helps to fix them into place with a glue gun.  And, you can decorate them if you want.  These are great fun.  Just be warned, the glue gun is a great tool, but a HUGE distraction with the boys.  They seem to like to glue lots of things other than the parts.

 You can also build in some learning at the same time if you want.  I will be doing that in a couple of weeks as I work this project in my teaching at a local school.  We will start with the idea of atoms, electrons, building a battery, then onto circuits.

Kindergarten Toy Designers

Today we had the kindergartners build toy vehicles that used magnets as "engines".  Given a cup, a doughnut magnet, popsicle sticks, life savers, straws and tape the kindergartners were challenged to build a vehicle that they could "push" around with a wand magnet.   All the students jumped in with great confidence and glee.  All were successful and had great fun driving their vehicles around the classroom.

I love challenging the students to these types of fun exercises because it gives those students who don't normally construct things a chance to try out a new activity.  And for those students who excel at hands-on activities, it gives them a chance to shine.

STEM Workshop for Teachers

I ran a workshop for teachers a couple of weeks ago.  I have been trying to get this post up, but we had a week off of school due to snow and frigid weather.  Then, our pipe burst, but now the kids are back in school, the work is being done on the house to repair all the damage and I am trying to get this posted.

I presented a bit of background information, then we went into the why's and wherefore's of teaching engineering design to elementary school students.  There are those who are of the opinion that we should not be teaching kids any type of "engineering" because they are too young and it is just a dumbed down idea of building stuff.  However, I am of the mind that kids love to make things, and yes, all right, they can't design a bridge that would meet the safety codes for use on a highway, but we can give them the tools and excite them about how the science they are learning in school can be used and is used everyday all around them.  So, what is the harm in having them pretend to be engineers?  I think it would be so much better to have them pretend to be engineers than supermodels or secret agents.

So, why do we want to use hands-on engineering type problems to teach children science concepts?  Just think of the following study of the retention of students presented with material to learn:


§10% retention with reading only
§26% retention with hearing only
§30% retention with seeing only
§50% retention with seeing and hearing
§70% retention with seeing, hearing, and repeating,

§90% retention if learner saw, heard, repeated or said something about topic, and used ideas 

 (You can find more about these ideas in *Teaching Engineering, Wankat and Oreovicz, McGraw-Hill, 1993, Chapter 15, “Learning Theories”.)

      So, a hands-on experience can give a student a 90% retention of the ideas presented because they will have seen the material, heard the teacher talk about it, then they will repeat or talk about it among themselves and will think and use the ideas in their assigned activities.  This is only a bit of what I covered, but one of the most important points, I think.  After finishing the presentation, I gave the teachers a chance to have fun with a hands-on activity themselves.  I challenged them to think like a Greek or Roman and build a simply support bridge.  Their challenge was to build a bridge holding the most coins.  I used nickels simply because they weigh 5 grams each and are easy to count for most young students (2nd and 3rd graders).  (Just for your information, pennies weight approximately 2.5 grams which is a bit more of a challenge for calculating weight.)  For the first part of the challenge, the teachers could use only one sheet of paper a bit of tape and no other tools.  For the next challenge, they can use a fresh sheet of paper but scissors in addition to more tape.  Here are the teachers having fun with their challenge.  I must say the activity got a bit competitive between the teams!

I did see quite a few approaches to the challenge.  The most common approach was to fold the paper, but you can see that one group tried a fan approach and another group used the idea of the covered bridge design.  I encouraged them to think like Greeks and Romans, but no one used the idea of columns in their designs, but all had fun and it encouraged them to think of new ways to get the students engaged.  

I am looking forward to hearing about how they will include hands-on design activities in their classes in the coming months.  

If your school is interested in a fun workshop about STEM and design in the classroom then please contact me.

Magnets for 2nd Grade

Here are the STEM activities for magnets for 2nd grade.  The first four activities in this set came from Janice Van Cleave's book called Magnets (1993).   She has written many books with great activities.  The four used below are all tried and true, and have been used for the last 6 years in class.  These activities try to get the students thinking about the strength of the magnetic field and how it can be disrupted.  The last activity is from the Exploratorium snacks page.  Three magnets are placed on a platform and a fourth is suspended from a string and the magnet on the string is set in motion.  The magnets cause the motion of the hanging magnet to be chaotic.  Second graders obviously will not have a good grasp of this idea, but is a fun activity and they do understand the idea of predictability.

Virginia Standards

2.1 Scientific Investigation
2.2 Force, Motion, and Energy

Next Generation Science Standards
K-2-ETS1-1 Engineering Design
2-PS1-1.A Matter
3-PS2-3 Magnetic Interations

First Grade: Playing with Liquids

Staying on the water and liquids theme, here are four experiments for the first graders that mostly came from Janice Van Cleave.  She has lots of great books about various science topics.  For these activities I started with some of her ideas and expanded on them.  Again, I set up four tables and had a volunteer at each table to oversee the experiments with the students.  For the liquid density experiment, I would have the volunteer  run the experiment because it could get so messy.  However, the kids love to see all of the liquids poured into one container and see them separate just as they predicted on their data sheets.

These meet the following standards:

Virginia Science Standards

• 1.1 Scientific Reasoning
• 1.3 Matter
• 1.8 Resources

The Next Generation Science Standards

• K-2-ETS1.1 Engineering Design
• 2-PS1-1.A Matter
• KESS3.C Human Impact on Earth

Kindergarten - Water Exploration

This is a unit that I do with the kindergarten classes.  In Virginia, the students study water and do the classic sink and float experiments.  In this unit, I introduce prediction and observation through water play.  There are many concepts in here that are a bit complex for kindergarten students, but you can get the ideas across using simple examples.  Some of the children will "get it" right away, and others might not understand very much, but they will remember the experiments.

Here are the standards that these experiments address:

Virginia Standards

• K.1  Scientific Reasoning
• K.5  Matter

Next Generations Science Standards

• K-2 ETS1-1  Engineering Design
• 2-PS1-1.A  Matter

I try and do these experiments outside in the fall or spring.  Depending on how much you let the children do they can get a bit wet.  I use square wash tubs to hold the water.  All the materials are readily available.  I have seen various versions of these experiments in books and through the web.   I have a set-up of four stations per classroom, which means there would need to be four adults available. The session is set to run in 45 minutes with about 10 minutes at each station.  The files are loaded as jpg files.  If you want them in a pdf format or word you can email me for those files.

Changing Focus

As time has passed, my kids are growing older, and my son is midway through middle school and my daughter is almost through elementary school.  I am still running sessions at the elementary school, but not as many.  I have decided maybe the best way to get more people involved is to start posting all of my work on the site in hopes that other people will take it and use it.  My work has mainly been a compilation of experiments from books, the web, and many that I have developed.  Where the experiment is unique, I have given credit for the experiment or idea.  Experiments that I have found in multiple locations, I have not referenced one or the many, and in most cases I have modified the experiments to suit our needs.  The experiments range from science related to various topics to design exercises.

I hope that people will find them useful.

I will try to load one or two a week until I get through them all.  I will start with Kindergarten, go through the grades until I have all of my work uploaded.  They will be uploaded as jpg files.  If you find them useful, you can contact me and I will be happy to email you a pdf or word file.

I will still teach workshops for teachers and run sessions at the schools when asked.  Just contact me if you want more information.