Where to find all the Resources for the Month?
If you're feeling a little overwhelmed or lost by all of the content in this program, please watch the video below to get oriented as to what is available and where to find it. It's worth the time you spend to get oriented in the right direction!
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Week 5: Physics Fundamentals
Discover the four fundamental forces of the universe and how to detect two of them: gravitational and electromagnetic! We're going to learn the difference between weight and mass by visiting different planets, detect electrostatic flashes around the house, and build a galvanometer to prove the scientific link between electricity and magnetism. We'll also get to build a working Hovercraft, and you get to pick which design you'd like to try out! (This week covers Unit 1.)
Week 6: Physics of Motion: Velocity & Acceleration
Get ready to soar, zoom, spin, gyrate and move as you discover Newton's Laws of Motion through this fast and furious class in inertia, mass, velocity, distance, speed, g-force and acceleration! You'll get to drop kick, rocket launch, spin up, and blast skyward as you create several different projects in projectile and freefall motion as we do the Egg Drop Challenge together! (This week covers Unit 2.)
Week 7: Energy: Potential, Kinetic, Work & Power
Energy is the mover and shaker of the universe! Did you know that the energy on Earth actually comes from the sun? The energy from sunlight gets transformed into chemical energy in plants, which get eaten by animals and transformed into other forms, including heat, light, sound, and more. Let's take a closer dive into the world of energy and discover how energy is constantly transforming between kinetic and potential energy by building several homemade catapults! (This week covers Units 4 & Unit 5.)
Week 8: Sound Energy: Vibrations, Frequency and Resonance
Sound is a form of energy - it's energy traveling as a wave. All sounds come from vibrations. Sound can be very powerful. It’s basically made up of invisible waves of energy that go through things like the air, the ground, water, or through solid stuff like guitar strings. But it needs something in order to move. (This week covers Unit 6.)
Week 9: Engineering & Innovation
Special class! You are going to design and build your very own Rube Goldberg Machine! We've covered a LOT of physics in just over a month: forces friction, gravity, energy, power, momentum, inertia, velocity, acceleration, sound and so much more! Now let's take a look at how we can put all of these together into one design challenge that will really make your kids run wild with ideas!
Making a Science Lab Worksheet
How do you create a science lesson worksheet that really captures what you're trying to do with your lessons? When I taught mechanical engineering at Cal Poly state university, one of the big things that students struggled with was creating their own data tables, because they had relied on other people / textbooks / teachers to always provide them with a "worksheet" to go with their "lab".
This means that they never developed the ability to generate their own work. What's worse, they didn't really understand how to think like a scientist. And that's something you can start doing now, no matter how old/young your kids are!
There's really nothing magical about a science worksheet or data tables. You don't need a "printable" or anything fancy. These data tables and worksheets are actually just an expression of what naturally comes out of your science experiment. And the whole point to doing an experiment is to answer a question.
So we start with a question, and we make sure it's something we can design an experiment around it, so it has to be answerable with something that is measurable. The rest is really very easy!
The ideas in the video here are taken from my college-level lab reports that we had students turn in at the end of a standard three-hour experiment. This format has been adjusted to hone in on the essential things you must have to make it a real science lab data sheet.
Airplane Party!
Join me for a super-fun AIRPLANE PARTY! We are going to be going on bonus field trips that involve flight lessons with a real pilot, so we're going to kick it off with an indoor version that takes a look at airplane dynamics!
Kids will not only make their own airplanes and propellers, they'll also test wing design and make sure their flying machine is passenger-worthy! Class taught by a real pilot and aerospace engineer!
Materials needed (you don't need all of these, just gather up what you have handy):
- Paper
- Pencil
- Markers
- Tape
- Scissors
- String
- Paper clips
- Tacks
- Stapler
- Glue
- Index cards
- Tissues (like Kleenex)
- Plastic bag or plastic wrap
Flight Videos
These are short sample flight videos. When we do our real flight lessons, they'll be much longer. This is just a sneak peek!
Möbius Surprise!
In mathematics, a Möbius strip (or loop, also spelled Mobius or Moebius) is a surface with only one side and only one boundary curve. If you trace a line along the length of the strip before giving it a half-twist and taping it together, you can get a fun surprise when you cut along the line after it's taped together!
The above is a sketch from Marvin Gardner and a note about how to assemble a slightly different model that gives surprising results!
This particular Möbius strip is from the unpublished work of Marvin Gardner, an author and known for his math puzzles and articles written for Scientific American. Some of his articles and "recreational math" puzzles touched on cutting-edge concepts that intrigued the world's most creative minds and inspired important research and developments. Amazingly, he had no formal training in mathematics!
Here are the instructions in more detail. Give it a try!
Stargazing and Aurora's NEW BOOK!
Thank you to EVERYONE who has helped me along my science adventure over the years! I did an astronomy and star gazing event to kick off things on Monday Sept 13th, the night before my book was released!
In case you missed it, you can still participate no matter where you are in the world. You'll even get to meet Brian on Monday during our star gazing event. He is the astronomer who took the astrophotography images in the stargazing section of my book. He'll be showing you the night sky through the exact same telescope that took those images in your book! Here's the link for the book: www.AstronomyByAurora.com