Have you ever experienced a shove when you were travelling in a vehicle and it suddenly turned? Or did you ever find out why water in a swinging bucket does not spill? The causes for both the incidences are the same. Here are a few activities you can include in your homeschool curriculum to make science interesting:
Swirling Can: Take an empty soup can and tie a string to it. Hold some water in the can and suspend it from the attached string. Make sure you fill it up partly with water and twirl it around in a horizontal loop. Make a vertical loop, swirl it around. Do you see any water spilling while the soup can is in motion?
Why does the water not spill? When swirling the soup can at a specific speed, you will never see the water spilling out. With the can swirling faster the water will start feeling heavier and may press against the can’s bottom. The quicker you swirl, the water will feel heavier and more it will press to the can’s bottom. As the can is swirled, the water travels more in a straight line. However, the can obstructs water by turning, sustaining contact with the water. This makes for a great topic when homeschooling.
Homemade Accelerometer: Take a transparent flexible pipe and make a ring, connecting the ends with a connector or union. Fill the pipe up with colored water. Make sure it is half full. Now position the ring on a table and mark the 9'oclock and 3 o'clock positions keeping the union at 6 o'clock. Write 2 g at the 11:15 and 1 g at 10:30 position.
In case the clock’s hands are at 9 o'clock, angle between the hands is of 90 degrees. When you reduce the angle to half, the smaller hand will be at 10:30. Now, half of 45 will be 22.5 degrees, which at 11:15 will be 2 g mark. Now you can measure the G-force you feel in your vehicle. At the 3 o'clock mark, hold the ring and gauge how high the water rises.
If your children enjoyed your accelerometer experiment and swirling can, you can find more such exciting activities over the internet. Practical experiments are definitely a great way to make your little ones learn about since and every day processes. There are several activity books that you can buy to make science more interesting for your homeschoolers.
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