Category: scienceweek

6th class conducted three experiments:

Bernouli’s Principle...How planes fly using a ping pong ball and a balloon

Bernoulli’s principle helps explain that an aircraft can achieve lift because of the shape of its wings. They are shaped so that that air flows faster over the top of the wing and slower underneath. Fast moving air equals low air pressure while slow moving air equals high air pressure. The high air pressure underneath the wings will therefore push the aircraft up through the lower air pressure.

Centripetal Force  using a coin inside a balloon

The shape of the balloon makes the penny move in a circular path – otherwise the penny would want to continue to move in a straight line. Another force to consider is friction. There’s very little friction between the edge of the penny and the balloon. More friction would cause the penny to slow down and stop.

The real force in action here is called centripetal force, which means center-seeking. This is a force that is always directed toward the center of the circle and is actually responsible for keeping the penny moving in a circular motion inside the balloon.

 Static Electricity , using hair and balloons

Rubbing the balloons against the woolen fabric or your hair creates static electricity. This involves negatively charged particles (electrons) jumping to positively charged objects. When you rub the balloons against your hair or the fabric they become negatively charged, they have taken some of the electrons from the hair/fabric and left them positively charged.

 

[AFG_gallery id=’32’]

 

1st Class went outside to demonstrate the exploding diet coke and mentos sweet experiment. It was like an oil geysher . How does it happen?

The Mentos serves as a little factory and launchpad for bubbles—supercharging the normal bubble-formation process in the Coke. The mint’s rough surface has thousands of tiny pores,  ideal  for lots of bubbles to form. As the bubbles grow they  float up to the top of the Coke. The process keeps chugging along, creating more and more bubbles until it explodes out the top of the bottle in a foamy overflow.

[AFG_gallery id=’31’]

Senior Infants were experimenting with magnets to see how they attract and repel from each other.

[AFG_gallery id=’30’]