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What is an unbalanced force? What is a balanced force? These questions were answered by our 3rd graders recently in our Science STEMscopes unit of Objects and Motion. For those of you who are unfamiliar with STEM... STEM is a curriculum based on the idea of educating students in four specific disciplines — science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Sometimes an art project is done as well. Then it becomes STEAM. The first part consisted of Objects and Motion stations. The students explored different ways that forces were applied. We sent cars, balls, and marbles down ramps of different lengths and heights to determine what would affect the forces. We looked at pendulums with different lengths of string. The students had a great understanding of what forces could do. Our wrap up project was creating a Pop Fly machine. We received a letter from the local little league asking for some help. Their players have been having difficulties catching pop flies, so they wanted us to create a machine that would send a ball high up in the sky. We created prototypes using simple materials such as spoons, cardboard, rubber bands, paint stirrers, and pencils. Our goal for the prototype was to send a marshmallow one meter high and one meter long. The students were very successful and learned a lot about balanced and unbalanced forces.  Designing our posters In Math we had been studying our unit in Measurement. We were learning how to measure perimeter and area when....March 14 occurred. Those of you math geeks know how important March 14 is, it's the day we celebrate Pi. Not the pie you eat, but the mathematical symbol known as Pi. Since we were figuring out the perimeter of rectangles and squares, why not figure out the perimeter of a circle? When you determine the perimeter of a circle, you determine it's circumference, and that is where Pi comes in. We use Pi to figure out the circumference of a circle. Pi is one of the coolest numbers because there is no pattern in its number sequence AND it never ends! How cool is that?!? Some people have memorized many of the digits of Pi, some just the first three digits, which are 3.14. Get it? March 4---3/14---3.14! The number Pi is: 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286 ... Notice the dots at the end? It means that the number goes on and on and on. For the purposes of the math we were working on ( and to make things a little simpler!) we rounded to the number 3. First we tried to use a regular linear ruler to measure the circumference of a circle, it was pretty tough!  We then used the formula of the diameter of the circle times Pi. Easy, peasy! So if you have a 9 inch circle across, the circumference would be 27 inches! 9x3=27.  Enjoy Pi day everyone! |
Mrs. Pamela WandersenHello there! Archives
June 2020
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