This week, we started our new mini-topic: Forces. We’re focusing on levers and pulleys.
To begin with, we used some paper and a toy car to figure out what we we already know about forces. Help at home by asking your child what forces act on a toy car or a falling piece of paper.
After that, we investigated levers and pulleys. Levers and pulleys are essentially a mechanism to exert a larger amount of force with less effort. To demonstrate this we did a little experiment:
That’s right. Despite weighing less than half what I do, Noah was able to lift me up. Ask your child how this works?
We also thought about more common examples of levers and pulleys – ones we might use in everyday life like scissors (ask your child about how were going to remember the silent ‘c’ in the word scissors) and lifts.
Tomorrow, we’ll begin working on a little project, in which we’ll apply our knowledge of forces, levers and pulleys: (attempting) making a rube goldberg machine.