World Science Day - Planes and Boats

 This week, we have been thinking about the Science related to different modes of transport. On Tuesday, we learnt about the forces that help aeroplanes to fly: gravity (weight), lift, thrust and drag. We then went on to make paper aeroplanes, observing how different designs affected the forces. 

We learnt that: 

• Thrust is provided by the propellers or jet engine of a plane. When making paper aeroplanes, we are providing our own thrust by throwing the planes through the air.
• The wings create the lift, which help to keep the plane airborne.
• The size of the vehicle and the material it is made from will effect its weight
• The shape of the vehicle will minimise drag. This is caused by the force of the air/wind hitting the vehicle as it moves.

On Wednesday, we experimented with making our own boats. The children  set up a simple recording experiment to test the buoyancy of different materials. They then used their findings to help design and build their boat – taking into account that it would need to support the weight of marbles at our testing stage. At the end of the day, we created a fair test for the boats, adding 1 marble at a time to each boat. The winning boat managed to hold 42(!!) marbles before it sank.