As homework this week the children have been tasked to talk all about John Dunlop, our features scientist for the half term. John Dunlop invented the pneumatic tyre when he saw his son riding his tricycle very uncomfortably around his garden! He used a garden hose filled with air to test his ideas.
In Science this week we have experimented with different balls to see which would make the best tyre. We rolled the balls down a ramp and measured how far they bounced back off the wall. We were careful to keep everything the same apart from the ball.
We found that the soft, rubber ball bounced the furthest. I wonder if you can think of a reason why that was?
Then we used three of the same balls but filled with different amounts of air. The ball with the most air bounced the furthest – can you think how John Dunlop’s invention matches our results?
