Posted on: May 1st 2015
Pre-Prep
In Pre-Prep we attempted to create a marble maze which would keep a marble going for 60 seconds. Unfortunately the longest we kept it going for was 32 seconds. We made the marble maze out of paper, card, and other household recycling and taped it to the fence in the Pre-Prep garden. During our discussion after we tested it, we decided that we'd need to make it twice as long to make it last for 60 seconds and be more careful not to have gaps.
Form 2
Form 2 had lots of fun investigating how they could make a 60 second sand timer by constructing their own cardboard tubes and testing them using stop watches. At first it was challenging and the children had to vary the width of their tubes in order to make the flow faster or slower. The most successful group achieved a timer which lasted for 72 seconds.
Form 3
In science as part of our topic on light and shadows we made our own sun dials. We used them in the playground to observe how the sun moves in 60 seconds and one hour.
Forms 4, 5 and 6
Forms 4, 5 and 6 were also challenged to produce a marble run that kept a ball rolling for 60 seconds. At first glance, the task appeared to be quite easy but once we began, the difficulty of it became more apparent! It was easy enough to make the marble roll through the various tubes and cardboard boxes but we had to think hard about how to slow it down enough that we would reach the magic 60 second mark. Form 5 thought about how gradients would affect the speed of the marble and experimented with a steep ramp at the start of the run that, unfortunately, meant the marble raced through to the finish! Form 6 tried to use ramps and flaps fashioned from cardboard and Form 4 thought about how to use various materials around the classroom to help lengthen the run. All in all, a challenging but very fun task indeed!
