Thursday, December 11, 2014

We're teaching....physics?

What is the maximum weight a 5 year old can pull? Does friction have any impact? What about the slope? What if the 5 year old is sitting or standing? What if a 4 year old helps?

Ok, ok so not exactly the most advanced physics questions but the children were quite eager to find out the answers anyways. A large group of the children spent most of recess making a sled train. They'd have 3 or 4 sleds with a rider in each holding on to the rope of the next and try to move them. Unfortunately what mainly happened was the person in the first sled (the one who ended up pulling most of the weight) would slide right out of their sled. So they'd start all over again.

They experimented with different people pulling, taking away the last sled, and then just as they'd get the train going someone else would jump on and the entire thing would fall apart. No one got mad though, they'd just up and try again. Foot by foot they moved the little train along.

Then they got to the sliding hill....

I'm not quite sure what happened. All I know is the next time I looked over all the sleds were at the top of the hill, children were swarming around, hopping in and out, pulling one another a little ways and stopping, turning sleds around, all sorts of commotion. I felt kind of bad breaking it up with the call to go inside.

Oh well, tomorrow they'll get to experiment again.

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