Balance and Motion

For the past 8 weeks our classroom has been studying balance and motion in science.  Students have learned about what it means to be balanced and how they can effect balance using counterweights.  They studied a variety of toys that work using motion -- from spinning tops to whirling zoomers and rolling wheels and cups -- they have played and learned!  All of this learning and experimenting ended with a culminating activity this past week - building a marble rollercoaster.  Students applied what they have learned and created a classroom sized roller coaster for a marble to navigate.  It was amazing to watch as they processed their failures and discussed how they would adjusted their coaster to make it work.  You could certainly see that they understood the concepts of force, motion, and gravity. And honestly, how fun is it to build a rollercoaster??

Students experimented with shorter coasters first to see how they would act.

Groups then assembled all of their tracks together to create one LONG class coaster.