Science Sunday - spinning tops

As a continuation of our balance study, we investigated spinning.  I presented the kidlets with a variety of dreidles. Each child shared the description of the tops of they have at home.  We compared shape and size and duration of spin. 
Then we made our own tops. 

First we tried spinning just a plain sharpened pencil.  As anticipated they did not spin at all.  The kids hypothesized why the pencil would not spin and how to make it spin better.  We added a disc of paper to the pencil and now we had a top. 
We added paper clips to the paper to give them some additional weight This made the tops spin even better.
We tried to add pennies to the top to give them even more weight but the pennies did not stay glued on well enough to spin. 
Then each child drew a picture of their own specially designed top.  

 We ended the time together by becoming tops ourselves.

Comments

  1. You are designing such a fun study. I love to read your posts

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Ticia. It has been lots of work but lots of fun designing it.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

WFMW - Sewing Machine

Its Giveaway Time Again - Cooking and Kids

Book Giveway - Children