Experiment 3: Inertia

Find out about inertia with an orange, card, and a mug. (This idea comes from 50 Science Things to Make & Do by Usborne.)

Inertia measures how hard it is for a force to move an object. The orange has high inertia, because it's heavier (so it drops instead of being jerked aside), and the column has low inertia, because it's lighter (so it's easily thrown aside). 

What about a bus and a feather? Which has more inertia?

Experiment 2: Stable Structures

(This idea comes from 50 Science Things to Make & Do by Usborne.) Use marshmallows and half lengths of uncooked spaghetti to build a cube. Does it feel stable?

 Not very stable!

 

That's better. Build the tallest tower you can from marshmallows and spaghetti. Put some card on top and see what weight it will support. (Our eagerness to consume some of the building materials dampened our architectural ambition, but we still got the idea...)

"The diagonals make it stronger than if it's just a normal cube..."

Roman Day

Sophia and the rest of her year went to school dressed as Romans today, as that's the topic they've been studying at the end of this school year. Here was our attempt at a Roman look:

 

Experiment 1

Sophia's interested in science and for her birthday was given a book of simple experiments with explanations of what's happening (50 Science Things to Make & Do by Usborne).

This one demonstrates what happens as paper fibers absorb water. The paper flower opens up faster or slower depending on the thickness of the paper used.

I was wishing my nephew Elijah, who also likes to investigate things, could do these experiments with Sophia. But as that's not possible, posting videos he can watch is the next best thing...